Fallout: Montana
by MoKidd
Summary: Cain Lone-Elk comes from a land of hardship, a land of fierce rules, a land where only the strong survive. In the ruins of the Old World and amid the backdrop of the majestic Rocky Mountains, he and his tribe eke out a living where few others dare to tread, but a new threat is looming on the horizon. A fierce enemy from the south is coming to their doorstep. Is he ready to face it?
1. Chapter 1

I saw them coming up the trail and felt my every muscle tighten with anticipation. I counted four of them in all, lumbering down the narrow trail and through the deep snow as if it were not even there. They were magnificent beasts, their four green eyes gazing over the blank white landscape around them. Each of them would weigh an easy thousand pounds, with one of the bulls looking as if he could top out at a ton. Their thick hides were shaggy and matted with snow, their breath coming out in little clouds as their great bodies heaved though the deep snow.

My rifle was heavy in my hands, the steel was cold to the touch, and the sight was on the shoulder of the big bull at the lead of the small group. A few months from now they would be in giant herds of thousands of animals, but now they were scattered in hundreds of tiny family groups like this to make the foraging easier. Few other animals could survive the deep, cold winters of these northern lands and most of them had fled to the south where it was supposed to be warmer and where there was more food this time of year. It was as hard for us as it was for them when the winter came and the meat on those beasts down below would sustain our clan for at least a month. Already there was hunger in our village and the children had started to cry for lack of food. I had no children of my own, but the three other men with me were family men and were feeling the strain.

Mentally I judged the distance to my target, I eased back the hammer of the rifle with my finger on the trigger so that it wouldn't click, and with careful fingers I picked up some snow and slipped it into my mouth. The snow cooled the inside of the mouth so that the breath wouldn't come out in foggy clouds like that of the Radbuffs and could not give away the hunter's position. The Radbuffs had the keenest vision out of those four eyes and could spot the slightest movement at this range. Four hundred yards was an easy shot for the .45-70 in my hands, but a slight movement now would ruin the hunt. Already we had tracked this herd for days. My finger tightened on the trigger, I took in a breath and let it out, then took in another and let it out slowly.

The rifle in my hands was the best in the clan and a trophy of battle, taken from the body of a war chief of the Black Hands. It was a fine weapon, an improved version of the Brush Gun that many called a Medicine Stick. I let out the breath slowly and held my sight on target, just behind the neck where the muscle was thinner and the heavy bone of the shoulder could not ruin the shot. My finger closed around the trigger and the heavy rifle leapt in my hands and the report of it rang in my ears. Two other rifles spoke at almost the same instant and I saw the bullets find their targets. Mine tore into the bull's neck, the other two hit the cow that was trailing behind him. The bull jerked his head slightly at the impact of the bullet, let out a challenging bellow to the unseen man who had shot him, then took a tentative step forward before falling in a heap into the deep snow.

The last members of the group, a younger bull and a calf, turned at the sight of their dead comrades and bolted down the trail toward the frozen river again. The shots echoed into the distance and lost themselves in the vastness of the plains, melting into the snow and the chilling wind before fading away into nothing. I levered a fresh shell into the chamber and picked up the empty for later reloading, then took a cartridge from my belt and fed it into the tube. That belt was made of the same leather that would come from those hides we had just taken, was wide and thick and held twenty cartridges for the .44 Magnum Revolver on my hip and thirty for the rifle. On my other hip hung a large fighting knife that some called a Bowie that I had made from an old file and the leg bone of a Mole Rat.

Clumsily, I got to my feet and brushed the snow from my heavy buckskins. My legs were cold and numb from lying in the snow for so long and my hands were stiff from the frozen air, but a few minutes of activity would loosen them up again. Marcus and Hawk's-Eye left their perches a dozen or so yards down the ridge from me and did likewise, Marcus with his Hunting Rifle in the crook of his arm and Hawk's-Eye already drawing his knife from its scabbard. Down the hill I could see August coming up from the draw where he had been holding the horses. We had brought four extras to carry the meat and hides and we all had packs on our saddles that could carry more. We had our mounts and the others were strong draft horses, bred for the carrying of heavy loads. It was a good haul, and even they would be strained to carry it all.

We made fast work of butchering out the animals, all of us working with skilled hands and sharp blades, and within an hour we had skinned out the bull and cow and loaded their hides, loaded with meat, onto the pack horses and packed the rest into bundles we had brought for the purpose. What couldn't fit in the packs we wrapped in smaller skins and put in our saddlebags. There would still be plenty left for the buzzards, the coyotes, and the Snowhounds.

Once in the saddle, we punted our mounts northwest and started for the mountain valley that was our home. The snow was falling less now and we made decent time down the already traveled trail. The plains around us were a sea of white, flat, dead, and void to the casual eye. I knew better. Out there were a hundred creatures that knew to remain hidden in the blinding daylight, waiting for the cover of night to come out and scrape away the snow for what little food was left after the months of bone-chilling cold we'd had already or to hunt the smaller creatures that fed the predators and the scavengers with their flesh. Only the might Radbuffs and the Snowhounds ventured about in the day, both at the top of their respective food chains and looking down on the smaller animals hiding in their holes and burrows. They were the lords of the plains, just as we were.

"Do you think it'll ever get warm again, Cain?", Marcus said beside me.

"You say that every year, Marcus. It's only been seven months."

"I mean like it used to be. You know, like the Old Ones say it used to be?"

"In the Time Before the Vaults? I doubt it. That world has been lost for a long time. Whatever is left of it is long gone. The old texts even say that the weather was changed by the Great War. I even found a book that said the winters used to only last four or five months. Five months? I couldn't imagine a winter so short."

"It must have been a wonderful thing to live back then."

"Why do you always go on about that stuff, Marcus? Ever since we were children you've been looking at the past and reading those old texts. It might have been wonderful back then, but it is all gone now. I live in the present. We have a good life here. All the game we can hunt, good water, the high mountains and the plains. What more could we want?"

Looking around at the white and windswept land around us, I knew that what I said was true. This was a land that was virtually untouched by the Great War and the nuclear warheads that had scorched the planet almost bare. Most of the major cities that had been hit were far away and this had always been an isolated part of the world even before the bombs fell. The animals here were largely unchanged by the mutations that had followed the nuclear apocalypse of so long ago. The Radbuffs were one of the few species who had been perverted by those mutations, as were the Snowhounds and the Yao Guai that had migrated north with the Radbuff herds, but in our mountains there could still be found large refuges where deer, elk, and moose still roamed wild and free just as they had always done. The horses we rode, some of the finest animals in the world and known even to our fellow horse tribes as some of the best to be found, had survived the bombs unchanged in the high mountain valleys and deep canyons where the radiation failed to reach them and where the water and grass were plentiful. Most of the tribes in the old states of Montana and Wyoming had found and tamed them once again after centuries of running wild. This had always been a horse country, and now it was even more so.

Of the many tribes that roamed the Northern Rockies, ours was by far one of the strongest. We were the Fire Hairs, named so for the thick and bright red and auburn color of our hair. Almost every member of our tribe was a redhead, with the few brunettes and blondes being the result of intermarriage with other bands or tribes. Our vault, Vault 94, had been an experiment like many of the vaults had been. Everyone that was sent to the vault was a natural redhead, the point being to see if the redhead genetic mutation could survive in a closed environment over so long a time. The result was a race of stout, tall, red-haired warriors who were known for our ferocity and our zeal in battle and for our strength and ingenuity in farming and building. Our vault had opened before many of the others and we had taken to the mountains as though born to them and quickly found them a paradise.

The other tribes of our area were less fortunate, but nonetheless fearsome and powerful. Our greatest rivals were the Black Hands, fierce warriors and hunters who lived by hunting and raiding their neighbors for what they needed and sometimes from scavenging old ruins and taboo places from the Time Before the Vaults. To the east of us were the Plainsmen, fine warriors and superb horsemen who lived mainly by following the Radbuff and elk herds across the plains and lived in hide houses that were sort of a mixture between a teepee and a wickiup. Nomadic and fierce, they raided for the little tech that they possessed and lived just as their ancestors had done for millennia. To the south and in the ruins of the old cities there lived the Psychos, the White Skulls, and the Ogawas, all of them savage tribes who scavenged for Old World tech in the remains of the cities and were constantly at war with one another and with anyone who entered their territories. They rarely hunted and almost never ventured outside of the old cities. To many they were known collectively as the Eaters of Men.

In the last few years, though, new tribes and new people had been entering our northern refuge. Traders and caravaneers from the east and the southwest had been following the old roads into our lands, bringing with them new trade goods and tales of new nations, new cities, and new wars in their respective lands. Some came from what they called the Capitol Wasteland and spun tales of a Lone Wanderer who had brought their factions together after showing them how to make clean water and allowing them to form what they called the New Republic. Others came from the southwest and told of a bright city that was untouched by the Great War and was rising to power in a distant land called the Mojave Desert where the nations of the NCR and Caesar's Legion had waged a long and bloody war over a place called Hoover Dam. We had heard of the Legion, for their ferocity was known far and wide and at times their raiding parties had even come this far north in search of slaves. Of the NCR and this New Republic we knew nothing and didn't particularly care to know anything at all.

To the west of us and in the old Wallowa Valley of the Bitterroot Range, a new tribe had moved in from the far west that called themselves the White Legs. They claimed that they had been driven from their traditional lands in Zion Canyon and the Great Salt Lake by a mysterious courier who united their enemies against them and all but wiped them out, but that a few of them managed to escape and make their new home here in the north. They, too, were raiders and hunters who knew nothing of farming and made war on all around them. Theirs had been a warmer land than this and for a time we were sure they would starve or freeze when the snows came, but they had proven resilient and were starting to make themselves great again little by little. They had raided our hunting grounds many times and once tried to attack our own village for slaves and horses. I had a scar on my arm and five scalps in my lodge that proved the futility of that particular decision.

Our horses crunched through the deep snow and in places we had to skirt wide around to avoid drifts in the gullies and low places. Snow piled in those declivities could be ten feet deep or more and would swallow a man and horse completely before they even knew they were in trouble. We crossed a frozen stream a few miles out, our horses barely getting their knees wet in the shallow but freezing water, and after wiping down their legs we continued on. All the time we rode with our rifles out and ready, for we were close to the boundary between our hunting grounds and those of the Black Hands. They were known to attack hunting and foraging parties in the winter months, stealing the meat and hides as well as the horses from our hunters and those of other tribes. Often when they couldn't find game of their own or when the winter had been hard they would raid for food and supplies even in the deepest of snows, and this winter had been especially hard.

Marcus and I were in the lead of the little column, both of us with our rifles across our saddles, with August and the pack horses in the center and Hawk's-Eye bringing up the rear. The wind howled and whistled over the bare plains and stung our faces with blown ice and snow. My cheeks were red and dry from it and my long red hair was swept backward in the wind, and I tried to huddle down in my scarf and heavy buckskins to keep out the worst of it. My rifle was cold in my hands and my fur-lined gloves did little to keep out the intense cold. We rode in silence, all of us with our eyes on the skyline and our fingers resting on the trigger guards of our guns.

Normally this was the easy time for us, the time of sitting in the lodges over warm fires and broiling meat and listening to the old ones tell stories of hunts, of battles, and of adventures of years past. In addition to being great warriors, we Fire Hairs were also known as wanderers and adventurers. Many of our kind had wandered the wastes in bygone years, some venturing as far out as Alaska to the north and Oregon to the west, although I had never heard of any of our kind going to the California or Capitol Wasteland that the newcomers spoke of. None that ever returned, that is, and many of those who ventured out to foreign lands never returned. This was the time that we prepared for during the rest of the year, stockpiling food and supplies from our hunts and crops in the short summer and long fall so that we could eat during the long winter. In the early and late months it was possible to hunt but when the deep snows came it was almost impossible to leave the villages and the high valleys where we sought refuge from the cold.

The horse I rode was a fine one, one of the best in our large herd. He was a tall black, stout for his age and able to run most other horses into the ground and still be going. I'd raised him myself and had broken him to the saddle when only a boy. I had four others back at the village, two that I had raised myself and two that I had taken in battle from Black Hands during the summer raiding months over the years. All were fine animals, but the black was by far the best and one of the best mountain and snow horses I had ever seen. His bulk moved easily over the snow, now two or three feet deep in some places, and the thick crust of white gave way under his powerful legs.

A movement caught my eye a few hours down the trail. It was a small movement, one that might easily have been the wind sweeping over the snow on a distant ridge, but it was there and it made me uneasy. Something had moved there, I was sure, and it was something that wanted to remain hidden because it was using the snow as cover. It was a flash of white on the crest of a ridge a few hundred yards away, the exact distance obscured by the wind and the blown snow, but it was there. A Snowhound? Doubtful. They would be feasting on those three carcasses back there by this time and they knew better than to follow so many men and horses in search of meat. I'd seen them take down colts and fully grown horses, but no Snowhound would challenge four men eight horses even for the huge haul of meat that we had in the packs. A Yao Guai? No, they would be easier to spot on this snow and they mostly kept to the thick woods near the mountains while hunting. That left only one thing that it could be; a man.

It was a distinct possibility. Most men knew better than to venture out in this weather, for just as the animals had learned to stay in their dens so we had learned to stay in our lodges when the snow grew deep and the wind blew cold. Then again, we were out here. It had been a hard winter for us and our people had been through a starving time, so it must be so with the other tribes. Whoever was up there was either on foot or was keeping his horse well hidden as he watched us. Likely he had a Snowhound hide for camouflage, for those hides were pure white and blended almost perfectly with the snow, and he was a good hunter and knew how to use the land to his advantage. That was something to consider.

His motives were obvious to me. This was a good haul of meat and the hides would make good winter clothes or bring a fortune in trade, not to mention our horses, guns, supplies, and the honor that our scalps and our gear would bring to the warriors who pursued us. Ours was a warlike time and all the tribes lived by war, the young warriors always searching for honor and glory and hunting trouble with their neighbors. I had ridden on many raids against many tribes in the warm months, hunting for horses, scalps, and counting coups.

The day passed by slowly, and when the sun was low behind the far mountains we hunted ourselves a campsite. There was a place we knew of and we made for it, a place in an arm of the foothills where a tall bluff formed a sort of cave out of an overhang of rock and a jumble of boulders that had fallen down the mountain in some bygone age. The pines were just starting their march up the steep slopes of the mountain, taking over the slopes where the aspens had sheltered them until they themselves fell away and were forgotten. In several places the golden canopy of the aspens could be seen in long groves higher up on the mountain and many others I could see the dead arms of the aspen and the tall green tops of the lodgepole pines. Here the younger pines grew close to the tiny cavern and formed a sort of shelter where we could hitch the horses and shelter them from the wind. The stone bluff would be a good reflector and what little smoke our fire would make would lose itself in the thick branches of the pines.

We stripped the packs form our horses and rubbed them down with rough cloths that we had brought for the purpose, then with a small shovel we cleared away the snow under the thick grove of young pines so that they could get at the grass underneath and picketed them where they could graze and be protected from the wind. Marcus and August set the camp while Hawk's-Eye and I took care of the horses and by the time we had them picketed they had a fire going and meat spitted over the flames. The smell of the meat cooking made our stomachs growl and I felt my tongue touch my lips in anticipation. None of us had tasted meat for weeks, our stores of dried meat having run out a month before and we had been subsisting on pemmican, grains, and the little that we could get out of our winter gardens. There was famine in our lodges and this meat would be a godsend when we got it back to them.

We all ate heartily and sat around the fire talking the sun out of the sky and the moon over the mountains and into the stars. Finally it was time to curl up into our blankets and Marcus and I volunteered for the first watches. Hawk's-Eye and August slid into their blankets with their weapons laid out close by in case of need, both of them asleep as soon as their heads touched their saddles. Marcus and I squatted on opposite sides of the fire and I added more sticks to it, looking away from the flames to save my night vision. Looking into a fire can be soothing and relaxing, but it also blinds a man when he looks away from the fire and into the darkness again. A knowing enemy could use split second of blindness for a shot or a movement. I'd seen more than a few men killed that way.

The fire was warm and it felt good after the long, cold ride. My mind was still on the mysterious movement that I had seen on that ridge, far away now, and the unseen watcher that I was sure was on our trail. He could be out there right now, watching the glowing dot of our fire from somewhere in the trees. If he was on foot, as I suspected, and was wearing good snowshoes then he could easily have kept up with and even overtaken our horses. A good man on shoes like that could cover ground with relative ease in snow this deep, whereas horses had to stomp and push their way through it and take much longer. He wouldn't be alone, either. More than likely the man I had seen was just a scout keeping an eye on us before the main force could ambush us somewhere along the trail home. There were many places where such an attack could be made, or they could try their luck here.

"Well, Cain," Marcus said after a while, "I think I'll take the second watch. I'll go bed down by the horses. You just wake me when it comes my turn."

"Sure thing, Marcus. Say, did you happen to see that hound up on the hill a while back? He was a big one."

"I did at that. He was a big one, alright. I'll have to watch the horses close tonight."

I knew that he knew what I meant and that he had seen either the same movement I had seen or some other that I had missed. He was a canny man and a superb hunter, and we had known each other too long to need explanations. Without another word he took his rifle and bedroll and went to the little corral where our horses were held. I fed fuel into the fire and banked it so that it would burn longer, then took up my own rifle and went into the woods.

The snow here was hard-packed and thick and easily held my weight, and my moccasins made little sound on the thick ice that was just below the surface. I held my rifle low and kept my thumb on the hammer and ready for action. I was certain that someone was out there in the trees watching us and I had never been one to sit tight when enemy was about. My way was always to attack. Never let the enemy get set, always take the fight to him and keep at him until he was dead or driven off. This was in my mind as I made my way through the stoic pines, their dark trunks like the pillars of some ancient cathedral and the moonlight casting an eerie glow over the snow and the thick needles that hung in the air like the spines of some great beast. The shadows were dark an deep and the wind was lesser under the trees, making the forest a ghostly and silent land that offered neither sound nor movement. Somewhere out on the plains I heard the long, lonely howl of a Snowhound, answered a moment later by another that sounded miles away. A few minutes later a coyote yapped into the night from somewhere up the mountain. They were lonesome creatures casting their loneliness into the wilds, just as I was.

I had always been a solitary sort of man. I was born for the deep forests, the dark trails, the lonely places where man never roamed and few beasts dared to tread. I loved the wilderness, the wild lands, the places where a man could ride for days and scarcely know he had moved at all. This was my kind of land. The cold mountain air was like cool water, the smell of the pines wafted into my nose on the slight breeze, and the only sound was that of the wind in the pines and the echoes of the coyote's call. Another coyote called into the night, this one much closer than the first. Only this one was no coyote.

The sound was from close by, no less than three hundred yards from where I now sat beneath the cone of a young cedar. I was completely hidden under the tree's shadow and behind the green cone. My rifle grew cold in my hands and my breath made little clouds as it came out. I took a pinch of snow and put it in my mouth to cool my breath. That call came again, closer this time, and it was a different man answering the first one's signal. This man was no more than a hundred yards from me now, and he would be coming this way. I knew this land well and I knew there was a trail just a little ways ahead of me that was used by elk and Yao Guai. It should be clear of most of the snow and would make a good route for a man on foot. I started to rise from beneath the tree and put out a hand to grasp a limb when I saw a shadow move between the trees and the flicker of moonlight on something metal.

Instantly I froze. Had he seen my own movement? He was coming closer now, whoever he was, and he was moving like a ghost in the trees. This couldn't be the man who had made that second call. That meant that there were at least three men out there, probably more, and they would know where our camp was and that they had us surrounded. They were coming in close now, stalking through the darkness, and they meant to take us all at once. To warn the others was out of the question. A call or a signal would betray my position and invite a shot from the hunters, which would attract fire from the camp as well. They were coming in close now and I saw a movement between trees again, this time just a few yards away.

For the first time I got a good look at the stalker. He was lean and wiry, his muscular form covered only by a Snowhound hide and the raw skins of an elk. His knee-high boots were made of the same white hide, his arms and chest were painted with white streaks, and in his hand he held a knife. His dark hair was pulled back and hung over his shoulders and I saw more paint on his face that marked him as a White Leg. The only other weapon I could see was a Hunting Rifle slung over his shoulder. His moccasin boots made little sound on the hard snow and he had snowshoes on beneath them.

I let him come on and after a moment he moved to a thick pine trunk that would easily hide his slim body. I could see his eye sweeping the forest and his head was angled as if he were straining to listen. Looking for me, no doubt. He sat and listened for a minute or so before he moved again, taking each step with infinite care. We were about fifty yards from camp now and he still hadn't seen or heard me and he had to know that I was somewhere about. I let him go another three steps before I finished my move and left the cover of the cedar. My rifle was in my left hand and held by the action. This would be close work, anyway, too close for the rifle. My hand moved to my side and slipped the thong from the hammer of my pistol. I crept up behind him, my moccasins making no sound, and in a few steps I was almost directly behind him.

"Nice night, ain't it?"

Instantly he spun around flipped his knife for a throw. My gun bucked in my hand and the thunderous report sounded like a cannon in the close confines of the pine forest. His chest blossomed with crimson and his body jerked back a step, dropping his knife in mid-throw as he fell backward into the snow. His knife stuck in the snow and ice, the haft standing erect and the blade catching the blue light of the moon. I had no memory of drawing my gun, but the bone grips felt good in my hand and my wrist felt jarred by the heavy recoil of the .44 slug. It took only a glance to see that the man I had shot was dead, his lifeless body lying on the snow and his cold eyes staring off into nothing.

Running feet sounded on the snow behind me and I whirled around just in time to see a man charging out of the sparse underbrush with a tomahawk raised for a blow. My gun bellowed in my hand again and I saw the heavy slug tear open his chest, followed an instant later by another that hit only inches away from the first. His body jerked and he crumpled in mid stride before falling face first into the snow, stone dead.

A few shots came from the trees higher up the moutnain and I holstered my pistol and levered three fast shots at the muzzle flashes that I could see. More shots came from our camp and I heard the bullets whistle through the trees and clip limbs in a few places. The shots died away, the sound rebounding off the stoic walls of the trees and the mountains before losing itself in the loneliness of the night, and then all was quiet once again. Somewhere up the mountain there was a muffled rustle of movment, then nothing. They were gone. I thumbed shells into my rifle and reloaded my revolver, then turned and looked at the dead men laying in the snow.

The first man I'd shot was lying against the trunk of a pine, his knife still stuck in the snow and his blood staining the snow red aorund his body before it froze and turned to crimson ice. The other man laid face-down in the snow, not moving or breathing, and when I hooked a toe under him and rolled him over, my rifle held low and ready, I saw that his face was covered with powdery snow and his eyes were wide open and cold. His tomahawk was still clutched in his hand and I saw a knife clenched in the other fist, held overhand as was normal when fighting with the two weapons, and when I looked him over I could see a rusted 10mm Pistol stuck in his belt and there were two magazines hanging in a makeshift pouch on the belt. The scabbard for the knife was covered in beadwork that I had seen on some of the scabbards and clothing made by the Plainsmen. Perhaps he had taken it from one as a trophy, or maybe traded for it at some point. The Tomahawk was definitely of White Leg make, their strange markings adorning the haft and the blade, and under the thick hides he wore I could see the white paint that they wore when going to war.

Both men favored each other and when I looked back toward the first man I could see for the first time that he was hardly a man at all. Behind the thick black hair and the whtie war paint, I found myself looking into the face of a kid who could not be more than fifteen or sixteen. In our tribe, and most other tribes, that was fighting age. This was probably his first raid and the man with the Tomahawk had probably been his father or brother. That other man was a muscular one, deep chested and broad across the shoulder, and the younger boy would have been just as broad if he'd had a few more years of life. I felt no sympathy for either man. This was a harsh land where men had to fight to survive and where boys had to grow up fast and take on a man's responsibilities and fight a man's battles. I'd gone on my first raid and killed my first man when I was only thirteen years old and led my first war party at the age of sixteen.

The others came from the camp, all with guns out and ready, and a glance was all that was needed to tell them what had happened. We were all warriors and we had all seen such things too often not to know how it must have happened. I looked through the dead men's clothes and found little more than I expected; a whetstone and smaller knife for camp chores, a book of matches that had seen better days, a few cartridges for a Cowboy Repeater that must have been left back at camp or used by one of the others in the party, and a small pouch of pemmican and jerky that would have done duty for rations. Neither man carried a canteen or water bag, depending on the snow and the ice of the forest for water, and both of them wore snowshoes. The shoes were well made and had apparently been made within the last few days, for they showed little wear and almost no sign of use.

There was little sound from the woods above and around us, so the others were either gone or laying low. I knew they were there, though. They were up there in the trees, the brush, and the shadows, probably looking down at us right this very minute and at the bodies of their dead laying on the reddening snow. I knew they were up there and I knew that they had marked me for death now, and I reveled in the thought. I leaned my rifle against the nearest tree and slid my knife from its sheath. I knelt down over the closest body and took hold of his hair, then slid the blade of the knife along the turf of his hair and felt the keen edge bite into the dead flesh and then the hair come free as his body fell to the snow once again. I held the scalp high and let out a war whoop that echoed down the canyons and the stoic walls of the mountains and the long halls of the forest. I held the scalp aloft and waved my knife so that the blade caught the moonlight, and I made sure they knew who I was.

"White Legs! I am Cain Lone-Elk of the Black Wolf clan of the Fire Hairs! This is my land and these are my people! I claim these scalps as my own! I challenge any that would come for me this night or any other, for I await you now!"

There was little talk between us as we made our way back to camp. We were all tired and we knew that a long, cold day of riding awaited us in the morning and within a moment we were all in our bedrolls. We set no guard for the rest of the night. Those White Legs out there had been confident and sure of victory, and now that arrogance had cost them two men and the element of surprise. Tribal wars were always fought in little skirmishes like these, with great battles being rare. Huge armies like those of the east and the south could afford to slug away at each other in long, bloody battles and drawn out wars over territory and riches, but in the tribes every man lost was a man that could not be replaced. The loss of even one or two men could break an attack by most tribes, for those were two men who could no longer hunt, no longer work, no longer make children to continue the line of the people.

Morning came bright and clear over the eastern peaks, bathing the long expanses of white and dull green in its light. The snow and ice caught the light like a million tiny diamonds, shining and sparkling on the branches and needles of the pines and cedars and on the iced-over boulders and stones where the snow had blown or melted off and left the ice behind. Dawn found us in the saddle and on the trail toward home, with me in the lead followed by Marcus and the pack horses, then Hawk's-Eye in the rear. We saw no sign of the White Legs, nor of any man for that matter, and for hours we wound our way down the thin sliver of trail that led up and into the mountains that we called home. We saw few creatures, once a lone Radbuff far in the distance breaking his way through the deep snow of the plain and once we startled a deer out of the trail ahead of us that darted off into the woods and vanished into the pines.

The trail we followed was barely discernible in the drifting snow. It was an ancient trail, as old as anyone could remember, and some even said that it had once been a road or a track of some kind back in the old times. In some places I could tell that the trail had once been a double track with a pair of twin ruts carved into the hard and dark earth. In the summertime it was especially so. In several places we saw the tracks of deer, elk, and once in the distance I could see where a group of wild horses had crossed a side trail and headed down off the mountain toward the plains where they could paw away the snow to get at the hidden grass.

We followed the trail higher and higher into a hidden valley where the meadows stretched away for a mile or more before us and high stone walls rose up a hundred feet or so on either side of the valley, which was about two miles wide by three miles long. A stream, frozen over now, ran the length of the valley and disappeared into the distance. At the head of the valley it fell away over rocky ledges and cascaded down the mountain in a series of waterfalls that were a sight to see in the spring and summer. The trail led up into out of the valley and into another valley, larger and deeper than the first, nestled between the forms of two huge peaks whose names had long been forgotten, if they ever had any to begin with. We called them the Two Brothers.

The valley that was our home was about five miles long and almost two miles across, the walls rose up nearly five hundred feet high and all of it sheer rock. The temperature was a little higher here than out on the plain and the higher mountains, the grass was a little greener, and the pines rose tall and in their innumerable battalions that marched on and away into the distance. The stream that ran down the valley was deep and swift, running fast enough to keep it from freezing for most of the year and running nearly twenty feet deep in the spring when the snow began to melt and the runoff from the Two Brothers swelled its banks. The best, clearest water that a man could ever drink. We topped out on the rise that swept down from a shoulder of the eastern Brother and looked down into our valley, all of us happy to be home after the long hunt.

Our village lay sprawled along the course of the river, dozens of lodges in tight little clusters around the open places where the meadows spread out around the long pools where the water collected. A lower meadow was farther down the stream, long and sprawling out into the mouth of the valley where the trees grew thick and dark and eventually spread out into the outer plains and the long, sweeping foothills where we would hunt our winter meat in the early months of the season. Sitting my saddle while the others rode down the trail and into the valley below, looking down at the meadow and at the countless forms that were grazing on the rich grass that grew along the river and in the sheltered places where the snow couldn't reach. There were around three or four hundred of them down there, all of them the finest horses to be found this side of the Plainsmens' herds of the Dakotas.

Most of the stock that we raised were mountain born and bred, many of them captured in the wild and broken to the saddle in this very valley or in the higher one through which we had passed a few hours before. I could see the four others that I owned grazing near the stream, my tall buckskin drinking the cool water and my strawberry roan pawing at the little bit of snow that had drifted down into the meadow from the higher slopes. The green grass grew richer and thicker there than in other places thanks to the cool water and it offered sufficient fodder to keep the happy for the duration of the winter months. Somewhere in the midst of the herd there was a chocolate-colored dun that stood fourteen hands tall and could cover ground at a pace that would eat up the miles with a space-eating trot and a dappled grey mare that I had raised from a colt and would soon be old enough to foal. Marcus had a stallion that would make a fine sire and we had plans to pair the two of them up in the summer.

Everyone came out to greet us as we came into the village, all eyes going from the bloody scalps on my saddle horn to the pack horses and their heavily laden packs that were stained with blood and stuffed to bulging with meat that would see us through the winter. I looked from one lodge to another and saw the remains of the winter's hunger on the faces of the old and the young of our clan. The past two months had been hard, cold, bitter ones where the wind had taken its toll on the people of the clan. Our winter crops had yielded much less than we had anticipated and the White Leg raiding parties, which had been much more frequent lately, had driven the game from the hills and forced us to go farther and farther afield to find our meat. We rode to the center of the village to the chief's lodge, and there we pulled the packs off the horses and laid them out for the elder to view.

George Standing Bear was the elder of our clan, what some would call the chief. He was once one of the greatest warriors of our clan, some said of our entire tribe, and although he was entering his sixtieth year of life and was old and feeble now, he still commanded a respect that only a seasoned warrior could. He stepped out of his lodge and watched us draw up in the village square and I saw him look to the bloody scalps on my saddle with a nod. He was as tall as I was and dressed in exquisite buckskins that were insulated with fur and decorated with red, blue, and yellow beads across the shoulders and along the seams of the sleeves where the fringe was sewn into the hide. On his cartridge belt there hung a large bone-handled fighting knife similar to my own and a .357 Magnum Revolver in a cracked and aged holster, both of which had seen much use. Tucked behind the belt was his tomahawk, the shaft stained dark and smooth with age and the steel blade colored to a dark patina from decades of blood and hard use. His face was drawn tight against the cold, his eyes were sunken behind thick wrinkles, and his once flaming red hair had now mostly turned white or a dull grey color.

Standing Bear looked over the large skins and Marcus opened one of them on the ground, showing the many pounds of meat that were held within. With a nod and a crooked smile, the old man gestured to the others to come and take what they would need. One person from each family came to us while we took down the skins and handed out rationed amounts to the fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives who came for their share of the meat. In the end it came down to a couple of pounds to each lodge, with those who had little ones or sick or old in their family getting a little more than the rest. I took none for myself and neither did Marcus. We had eaten back in camp and knew that the others needed it more, an action which Standing Bear noted and acknowledged with a nod.

Once the meat had been distributed, we went our separate ways. I went to my lodge and stripped the saddle from the black, rubbed him down after feeding him some handfuls of oats, then led him to the meadow to turn him out with the rest of the herd. I watched him join the other horses and loved the way they seemed to welcome him, nudging his neck and bobbing their heads as he came close to them. The two boys who were minding the herd sat their mounts and gave me a wave from the small knoll that overlooked the meadow, which I returned. The cold air came down from the high peaks, kissing the skin of my cheeks and neck and carrying with it the scent of pine and aspen. The snow swirled on the breeze in little clouds of white, the sound of the wind in the trees was like a melody to my ears, and somewhere far away on the lonely slopes of the mountain an elk bellowed his eternal challenge. It was good to be home.

Note from the Author: Hello again fellow Wastelanders! It's good to be back and I hope you all enjoy this new story! Feel free to leave a comment or a review on this chapter and I will decide whether to go further with it or try one of my many other ideas. Can't wait to hear from you and hope you enjoy it.


	2. Chapter 2

Morning came bright and cold, the pale light of the sun shining down through an overcast sky from over the eastern peaks of our mountains. Once these mountains had had an Old World name, but that name had long since been forgotten when the bombs destroyed the world that had come before the Time Before the Vaults. I squatted on my heels outside my lodge and looked through the faint smoke of my small fire as the village below me came to life. My lodge was smaller than the others, built out of thick bark reinforced with hides and poles made from young trees. It was more of a wickiup than an actual lodge and sat on the ridge that overlooked the valley and among a small stand of aspens that grew along an arm of the mountain. I had always been a loner and preferred to keep to myself most of the time, riding, hunting, and living alone on the edges of the village whenever possible.

Down below me were nearly two dozen lodges, varying in size from the long buildings that would house two or three families to the small, one-room lodges like mine that would house only a warrior or a single couple. There were pits for cook fires in every lodge but I had made a fire of my own just outside the door so that I could take in the morning. My rifle lay across my knees and the Radbuff robe I wore felt warm and cozy around my shoulders. A cold wind came down from the higher peaks and I felt the chill of it bite into my cheek even as the rest of me was covered and warmed by the thick hide of the robe. Behind me the fresh scalps I'd taken hung on rawhide strings from the door frame, all but dried and tanned now by the cold air and sun.

It had been three days since we returned from our hunt. Spirits had gone up since then, with every family getting their share of meat and the hides having been tanned for trade. For the first time in weeks I could see children playing and smiling and laughing, the hunger of the past few weeks forgotten after their bellies had been filled with rich Radbuff steaks, and as the kids ran and playing in the snow I could see their mothers and aunts and sisters watching over them with smiling faces. It had been a long time since I'd seen smiles like those in this village.

My rifle across my lap and my Radbuff robe pulled close across my shoulders, I sat over my little fire and chewed on some elk jerky as I watched the morning pass into the warmer afternoon hours. A steady snow had been falling since before dawn, a light dusting that would be of little consequence, but it was an omen of things to come. We were only a few months into the winter that normally lasted between five and six months, but all the signs pointed toward this winter being a long and cold one. The few migratory species had long since left the mountains, the pools that were normally only slightly iced over were all covered in thick ice, and even the mighty Radbuffs, who would usually stand on the open plain in the face of a blizzard and scarcely seem fazed, were searching for shelter among the foothills and canyons. There were deep snow drifts in the canyons and the rolling hills that would swallow up a man and his horse with ease and the creeks that would provide water to the stock and the game animals were either dry or frozen over. Even our winter crops, normally sheltered in the large caves we used as greenhouses, had failed.

Somewhere in the distance of the mountains and elk bugled into the snowy peaks, issuing his eternal challenge to any that would lay claim to his cows or his territory. An eagle screamed into the overcast skies, his dark form like a floating dot against the gun metal sky, and down in the meadow a mare whinnied to one of the stallions. I could see the two herdsmen huddled around their own fire, their mounts tethered nearby and all of them bundled in robes of their own. Taking another bite of the jerky, I couldn't help but marvel at the subtle beauty of the whole place. This was my home and I had seen this view every morning since I was a boy, but it never failed to amaze me with its beauty serenity. I would never have guessed that so many dangers lurked just beyond the hills and their innumerable legions of pines.

It had been three days since we returned from our hunt and the meat had been handed out to all the families of the village, the hides had been scraped and tanned, and the scalps I'd taken now hung from the doorway of my lodge. My rifle lay across my knees in my gloved hands and the jerky tasted good. The heavy gun was a comfort n the cold morning and the weight of the .44 on my hip was reassuring. Looking down at the people moving around down in the village and at the white and grey spires of smoke rising from the many lodges, I wondered how the coming winter would hit us. I'd seen storms that would completely block the passes and trails into or out of the valley and could close us in for months. If one of those were to happen now, we would be in serious trouble.

Sometime around noon I saw a form come out of the village and start up the low knoll toward my lodge. His large, muscular form was bundled in heavy skins and his thick boots broke through the knee-high snow with ease under the powerful muscles of his legs. He was about an inch shorter than my six feet and we were about even in weight, with me at about two hundred and twenty pounds and him at just under two hundred and thirty, all of it muscle on both counts. He had left his rifle in his lodge, but like any good warrior he was always armed. At his belt hung his bone-handled .357 Magnum Revolver in a crossdraw holster and his brass-studded Tomahawk was thrust behind the belt behind his hunting knife. His dark hair, a mark of his Black Hand ancestry, was pulled back behind his head and tied into a loose braid that hung down over his shoulders. The dark stubble and beard on his jaw and cheeks stood out against his otherwise pale face.

"Hello, Marcus."

"Hey, Cain. Fine day, is it not?"

"If you say so. How are things down below?"

"The same as up here, cold and snowy."

He dusted the snow from his buckskins and squatted beside my fire on my right, holding his hands near the hatful of flame and rubbing them to restore circulation. His face was red from the cold wind and blown snow was stuck to his dark hair, his beard, and the fur collar of his Yao Guai coat. The cold wind bit at the exposed skin of my cheeks and neck, so I pulled my robe closer around my shoulders and added fuel to the tiny blaze. I finished my jerky and offered some to Marcus, who declined. He had always been the humble type, not taking anything for himself when someone else was hungry for meat that he could give them. He was probably secretly peeved at me for hoarding my jerky when so many were without meat, but I was of no bother to me. He was my good friend, but often he was too much of a bleeding heart.

"Standing Bear and I had a talk this morning," he said after a few silent moments, "he thinks we're in for a hard winter. I have to say that I agree. He wants us to make a trading journey to the trader's town."

"Do we have anything worth trading?"

"We've been saving the best hides and we have some minerals that the men have found in the hills, plus the weapons and gear we've taken in raids. I think we can make a good go of it and come out with enough supplies to tide us over for a while."

"If we don't get caught in a snowstorm out on the plains between here and there, or get ambushed by those damned White Legs again."

"I've heard the Black Hands are on the warpath as well."

"This late in the season?"

"I know, it's strange. I've never seen so many tribes out raiding this late in the winter before. I guess the cold has hit them harder than we thought."

"It's hit us all hard. Those White Legs never were of much account. I didn't think they would last a year when they first came up here. They would have done better to go south or stay around the Great Salt Lake."

"They were massacred down there, remember? They tried to take down the Sorrows and the Dead Horses in Zion Valley and got their asses handed to them, then went home and found an alliance formed against them. From what I hear, they used to be the dominant tribe in their area before they lost their best warchief."

"Maybe, but they sure ain't the top dogs up here. Remember when they first came north? They nearly froze to death that first winter. It was just dumb luck that they cornered a few Radbuffs in a hollow and had meat for the winter. It's a wonder that the Black Hands haven't raided them out of existence."

"I've heard that the Black Hands have made a truce with them."

"That wouldn't be like them. The Black Hands don't like anybody, not even other Black Hands."

"You know that my mother was a Black Hand, right?"

"I'm saying."

We both shared a hearty laugh at that, one of the few that we'd shared in the cold months since spring. Most of our time had been dedicated to hunting, scouting, foraging, or keeping vigil over the trails and paths that led into and out of our valley. In the spring, when we moved the camp out on to the plains or along the rivers farther down the mountains, it was a time of raiding and farming and riding and just all around living. I longed for the spring to come and end this white nightmare. The land would be green and the waters would be warm and sweet and the hills would be filled with young game ripe for the taking, and the Radbuff herds would come up from the south and return in their hundreds of thousands to the places of their birth where they would breed the next generation.

"So when are we leaving?"

"Standing Bear told me that he wants us to leave in the morning. How does first light sound?"

"I'll be there. I'll get my gear together and pick out a good horse."

"Good. I would pack some extra food and ammunition, too. As you said, those White Legs might be out on the trails again and I'll bet that they'll wait until we're on our way home to ambush us."

"My thoughts exactly. Don't worry, Marcus, you what a cautious fellow I am."

I lifted my rifle from my lap and tapped the action with my gloved hand, then returned the smile that he gave me at the gesture. We talked on for an hour or so about various things, the route we would take, which traders would or would not be in the merchant town that we could do business with. Marcus had been there more than I had and he knew the trails much better than I did. There was a certain caravaneer that we both hoped would be in town when we got there, but there was no telling whether he would be or not. The way they traveled and came and went across the wasteland, one could hardly count on them to be in place very long.

A voice called out from the village below and instinctively the both of us looked up and saw the little figure in the fringed buckskins running up the snowy hill. This little person was the spitting image of Marcus, right down to the characteristic black hair that hung loose at his shoulders and shone like obsidian in the pale light of the overcast sun. His smile was beaming from ear to ear and his little body bounded over the snow with practiced skill, his moccasins burying themselves up to his knees in the foot or so of snow that had accumulated since the first flakes fell that morning. Adrian, Marcus' son, had always loved playing in the snow.

"Daddy! Daddy!", he called out as he ran the last few yards to my lodge and our place by the fire, "Daddy! Mommy says that dinner will be ready in a minute and that you should come home right now!"

"Well, I suppose I should do as I'm told."

"Hi, Uncle Cain."

"Hello there, little man. How's our little hunter?"

Marcus and I had been talking about taking the boy on his first hunt soon and he had been almost ecstatic upon hearing the news. He was almost seven years old and it would soon be time to take him on his first hunt, the marking of a boy's readiness to become a man in the teachings of our tribe. He was excited that we thought of him as such, and besides that he would be the first of the boys he knew to be given such an honor.

"Daddy, when can I go hunting? I want to shoot a Radbuff!"

"No, son, Radbuffs are too big for a first-timer like you. I think a Snowhound would be a better first hunt for you."

"Really?!"

"No."

I couldn't help but chuckle at that. I'd seen some of the best men in our tribe go out after Snowhounds and find nothing but prints in the snow and the bloody carcasses of their kills. I'd also seen men that had been attacked from ambush while out hunting or scouting or at night while they were asleep in their bedrolls. Snowhounds were the kind of creature that a man just didn't find unless he was just plain lucky or because they wanted to be found.

"Daddy, mommy's gonna be mad if we don't get home. She cooked Radbuff steaks and everything."

"Okay, son. Let's go eat."

"Yay!"

Marcus slowly rose to his feet, stretching his legs to get the stiffness of the cold and the long time of squatting on his heels out of them. He stamped his feet in the snow to restore circulation to his feet, rubbed his thighs to get rid of the soreness and stiffness, and then started down the hill with Adrian walking in front of him. He had gone about three steps before he stopped suddenly and turned to face me again, a crooked smile showing under his thick mustache.

"Hey, Cain, you wanna come along? Shana would love to have you over."

I knew that was a lie. Shana, Marcus' wife, had never really liked me that much. She tolerated me when I came to their lodge and understood that Marcus and I were goof friends and comrades, often going on long hunts in the hills together or riding together on the warpath during the raiding season in the spring and summer, but she had never liked me as a general rule. She always said that a man who is always alone in a tribe like the Fire Hairs, where family was seen as a man's greatest asset and strength, had something innately wrong with him. I had always been a loner and rarely rode, hunted, or socialized with anyone else. In some ways, I suppose, Marcus was my only real friend.

"Sure," I replied after a moment, "I'll come along. One thing I'll say about your wife, she makes a damn fine Radbuff steak."

Ten minutes of walking over the snow and ice brought us to the door of Marcus and Shana's lodge. Like most of the other lodges of our tribe, it stood about eight feet tall and was built on a frame of cut poles made from the shoots of young oaks and pines that we routinely gathered from the forests. The walls were made of a mixture of tanned and cured Radbuff hides, as hard as wood when they were properly tanned, and large sections of bark that we harvested from deadfalls and old trees. The roof was of a mixture of pine boughs and dead branches intertwined with cedar and pine bristles. The boughs were built tight enough to keep out the snow and ice, but were porous enough to allow the smoke of the cook fires through. The door was of a stretched hide tightly bound over a pole frame and held in place by rawhide hinges. The smell of meat cooking and pine smoke wafted through the air as Marcus swung the door open, revealing the spacious room within, and when I stepped inside the warm interior felt good after the deep cold outside.

The lodge consisted of a single large room that was filled with the amenities of daily life in the Fire Hair tribe. In the far end of the lodge were the and the bedrolls of the family, one large one for the parents and a smaller one for Adrian a few feet away, and on pegs on the walls hung Marcus' rifle, bow, a quiver full of arrows, and a spare ammunition belt full of cartridges, and closer to the cooking area were the wood and metal pots and pans that Shana used for cooking. Clothes were kept in bundles near the living area, tightly bound with strips of thick rawhide, and the family's few personal possessions were neatly placed around the common area hear the door that did for a cooking and dining area as well as a makeshift living room like those that I'd seen in the ruins of Pre-War houses. Adrian's toys were scattered in the common area, the little wooden rifle that I'd made for him last winter laying near the stuffed Yao Guai that Marcus had made from scraps of an actual hide.

Shana was bent over the cooking fire when we came in, turning the large steaks over a little metal grill with a bone fork. Her face was flushed from the heat of the fire, her strawberry blonde hair was pulled back in a long braid that hung down her back almost to her thin waist, and I couldn't help but notice the way that her buckskin dress hugged her form and the subtle curves of her shape. Her dress was white buckskin, fringed on the short sleeves and along the hem of her skirt, and on the shoulders and chest of the garment were patterns of green and yellow beads sewn on with Mole Rat quills and thread made from sinew. Her freckled face was pale, like most of ours were, and when she looked up at us her brown eyes suddenly showed a twinge of frustration. I could immediately guess why she was frustrated.

"Hello, Cain."

"Hello, Shana. You're looking lovely, as always."

"Marcus, you should have told me you were bringing your friend for supper. I would have prepared more if I'd known."

"Not to worry, Shana," I said with a smile, "I never come to another's home empty-handed."

I held up the sack that I'd brought from my lodge and put it down beside the cook fire. I laid out its contents beside the wooden bowls that held the dried berries and roots that would go with the meat she'd cooked. I'd brought a couple of potatoes from our winter gardens that I kept buried under my lodge to keep them fresh, a pound of the elk jerky, and the last of my honey that I'd kept from the previous summer. Adrian's face lit up when he saw that last item, and I gave him a sly wink to let him know it was for him. The boy had a sweet tooth, just like I did, and we both loved the stuff.

We all sat cross-legged around the fire and ate of the meat, roots, and spuds while we talked of the spring and summer that was to come. If all went well, the snows would be gone in a month or less and we would have sun and warmth for a time until the fall closed in again. It would be raiding season and Marcus and I talked of the tribes that would be raiding our valleys and which ones we would raid, the places where the game would most likely be when they returned from their southern migration, and of the young horses that would be foaled and need broken when the herd grew. Adrian talked about chasing the young colts across the fields and finally being able to swim in the river again when the water was warm enough. Shana had apparently been nagging Marcus for a new dress, and already he had promised to hunt a cow elk for her so she could make one from the beautiful hide and use the teeth as buttons and decorations.

As for me, I mostly just sat and listened to their conversation. Shana didn't like me much, but she had always said that my one redeeming feature was that I was a quiet man who liked to listen. Once upon a time I had tried to court her, but Marcus had always been her one true love and she had always been his. I envied them that. Adrian had been born the first year they were joined and from then on he and the boy had been inseparable. Sitting there and watching them all laugh, joke, and smile at one another as families often do made something deep inside me wonder why I was the man that I was. Secretly I had always wanted a home, a wife, and a family of my own, but what woman would want a man like me? I was tall, strong, and had been called handsome, but I was a man born for the high mountains, the narrow trails, the lonely places where only eagles, deer, and Yao Guai dared to tread. I had never felt more at home than when I was in some lonely, forgotten valley where man hadn't set foot since the Time Before the Vaults, if ever, and there was at least a hundred miles between me and the nearest person. It was no life for a woman who wanted a family or a man that she could count on to stay home with her.

Adrian sat beside me and tried his best to look as stoic as I apparently did, his little face straining to appear as sullen as possible while trying to avoid laughing at his father's many jokes. Adrian had always been like the son I never had and in many ways I had helped to raise him as much as his father had. I had given him his first riding lesson when he was two, I'd taught him how to build snares and traps for small game, helped his father teach him to track and to find water in the snow and ice and to know the plants and herbs that were good for food and medicine, and had even given him my old Varmint Rifle when his father decided it was time for him to learn to shoot. I had seen the gun hanging on a peg near Marcus' weapons, taken down only when he could watch the boy shoot and help him learn to respect it. Someday soon, probably in the coming summer, I looked forward to taking him on his first hunting trip along with Marcus.

"Uncle Cain?"

"Yes, Adrian?"

"Will I be a warrior like you someday?"

I saw Shana's head dart up when she heard the question, her face suddenly red, and across the fire I saw Marcus smile his crooked smile while trying to mask it with his cup. It was true that Marcus was a great warrior in his own right, but many in the tribe considered me to be the best fighter in the clan, if not the whole tribe. I'd been leading raiding parties since I was a teenager and had more kills to my name than any other warrior. The coups stick in my lodge showed twenty-four scalps taken and thirty coups counted.

Looking over at the little boy, his brown eyes searching mine for an answer, I have to admit that it choked me up a little. He was big for age and very strong, stronger than most of the other boys, and I could already see that he would grow into a fine man one day. His frame was stout and his shoulders were wide, wide enough to hold more than their share of muscle, and I had no doubt that someday he would stand as tall as Marcus and I or even taller. I knew how Shana felt about her son becoming a warrior one day. No mother wants to think that her son might one day have to take another man's life in the defense of his people, or be called upon to lay down his own for the same cause. In our tribe, though, all men were warriors and hunters. We all knew the risks involved, or claimed to, and it was a fact of life that we accepted.

"Well," I tried to choose my words carefully for his mother's sake, "yes, I think you will. Maybe you'll live in a time when warriors won't be needed, but I think that someday you'll be a great warrior."

"You think I'll ever be a hero? Like in the old stories?"

"Perhaps."

"I hope so. I can't wait to be big and strong just like you and Daddy."

"Don't worry, little man, your time will come soon enough."

"Come on now, son," Shana said after putting down her bowl, "it's time for bed."

"Mama! Heroes don't have bedtimes!"

"Well, you're not a hero yet. Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

Shana led him away by the hand to the washbasin near the bedding, leaving Marcus and I alone at the fire. We watched her lead the boy away and I couldn't help but smile at the way that he pouted at being forced away from the fire and the talk of heroes and hunts to come. Oh, to be that young again when the biggest worry was to be forced to go to bed early. He was young and innocent now, but just as I said his time would come soon enough. It was a sad thing to see the innocence of youth lost on the battlefield, but it was a necessary evil in the world we lived in. A man had to defend what was his and be prepared to fight for what he believed in, to keep the enemies of his people at bay, to put food on the table either by raiding, farming, or hunting. I had no doubt that he would make a fine warrior someday, but for now I was happy just to watch him enjoy his childhood. It was short enough in this world of ours and he had a right to have his for as long as possible.

Marcus and I finished off the last few scraps of the Radbuff meat, savoring the last few bites for the delicacies that they were, and for a while we were silent. We heard Shana fussing over Adrian in the closed-off washing area and the boy protesting his bedtime, but aside from that the only sounds were of the whistling wind outside the lodge and the crackle of the fire. It was a good life, fine life, a life that was worth fighting for.

"She doesn't like it when you talk like that, Cain."

"I know, Marcus. The boy asked and I told him the truth, that's all."

"She hates all that talk of heroes and battles. She doesn't like thinking of him going off to war someday."

"It's going to happen soon enough. You and I both know that."

"I keep trying to tell her, but she still doesn't like it. You better leave before she gets back and has a chance to sink her talons into you. I'll see you in the morning."

With a hearty laugh and a handshake, we parted ways and stepped back out into the cold. It was a long walk back to my lodge, but I pulled my robe close and passed through the deserted village and up the ridge to my home. All around me I could smell the smoke of the cook fires and hear the talk of the families inside their dwellings, the laughter of the children as they were taken to bed and told stories, and far in the distance I could see the fires of the night herdsmen as they watched over the horse herd. For a moment I had to just stand and look over the village for a moment and marvel at the beauty of it. I looked over the half-circle of buildings, the long white expanse of the meadow and its many dark dots that would be our horses, and at the dark wall of the pines as they marched up the mountain and into the black sky. I looked at the trees for a moment and could have sworn that I saw a movement about a quarter-mile up the mountain, a dark form moving from one pine to the next before disappearing. Probably a Snowhound out after an easy meal or, heaven forbid, a panther. The night herders would have to be extra careful tonight.

Once back inside, I prepared for the journey to come. I cleaned and reloaded my guns, filled the empty loops on my cartridge belt, reloaded the spent casings that I had collected, and packed up some jerky and pemmican for provisions. My bedroll was already tied to my saddle and I had picked out my buckskin for the ride to the merchant town. My canteen I would fill in the morning so as to have the freshest water. With that, I rolled myself in my blankets and was instantly asleep.

Dawn came bright and early and the sun was just barely shining through the clouds when I left my lodge with my rifle in one hand my saddle over my shoulder. A light sprinkling of snow was falling and the overcast sky was the color of cement. A cold wind came down the valley and bit into my cheeks, so I pulled the collar of my buckskin closer around my neck. It took only minutes for me to come down the hill and through the village, then to the meadow where the horses all stood bunched together to ward off the cold. The night herders were around their fire and I exchanged a good morning with them as I came over the hill. I asked them about the animal I'd seen in the trees the night before and they said that they hadn't seen anything but they would keep an eye out.

I picked out my buckskin from the herd and threw my saddle on his back, cinched it tight and slid my rifle into the boot. I fed him a carrot that I'd brought from my winter garden, then took some others to my other horses and ran my fingers through their manes. All but the mare were starting to shed their winter coats, a good sign that the cold weather would soon be over, and they all nudged me with their muzzles. The black had recovered from the long hunt and was ready for travel again, but the buckskin was the best trail horse of the lot and the mare was too close to foaling time to risk wearing her out. I led the buckskin out of the meadow to the edge of the village and saw Marcus and the others waiting for me. Most of them had already gotten their mounts and were either loading hides and trade goods onto the pack horses or putting supplies for the journey into their saddlebags. Marcus was sliding his Hunting Rifle into the boot when I walked up with my horse.

"Well, good morning sunshine."

"Shut up, Marcus."

"You ready for a hard ride?"

"Always. Who else do we have?"

"Hawks-Eye, Colin, August, and Dead Shot. Six others are getting ready to start out on a hunting party in the morning."

"That won't leave many men in camp. Sure that's a good idea?"

"We need the meat. Why, do you expect something to happen?"

"No. I just don't like leaving the village undermanned. You never know these days."

By midmorning we were on the trail and out of the valley. Within hours we were back out on the plains and heading southeast. The snow of the previous weeks had become thinner than before, probably from a spike in temperature that we might not have felt in our higher valley, and for the most part the trail was clear. We rode in a staggered column that was spread out for about a hundred yards or so with Marcus and I in the lead, Hawk's-Eye and Dead Shot on rearguard, and Colin and August, our two youngest members, leading the string of packhorses along. On them were piled about thirty Radbuff, deer, and elk hides, several skulls, forty pounds of bones, and around thirty pounds of freshwater pearls, raw silver and copper, and several types of gems that we'd found in the mountain streams over the past few months. All of them would be valuable in trade and were apparently in demand in the lands farther south, although I could never understand why anyone would come so far for pearls and hides.

I rode with my pistol loose in the holster and my hand on my thigh within easy reach. We saw no sign of other parties, or even any signs of game or passage of any kind along the trail, but there was always the chance. That attack by the White Legs still had me nervous, as did the shadow I'd seen skulking around our camp. It might have been an animal or a predator, but for some reason I couldn't help but wonder if it had been a man. Our high valley had always been a safe haven for the winter months, a natural fortress known only to us, but every fortress had its weaknesses. Any man could find a trail and any man could be good enough to sneak through our nets. If not the White Legs, then certainly the Black Hands or the Plainsmen would have men that were good enough to do so. They had been our enemies for generations and would love the opportunity to attack us while we were weak.

We rode southeast for most of the day before swinging onto another trail that many tribes called the Merchant's Trail or the Caravan Trail due to its popularity with the new caravans from the south. It had once been an ancient highway, the asphalt now mostly buried under two centuries' worth of dust and soil and in many places it was barely recognizable as anything but just another trail on the wide plains. There were still a few places where the old black pavement showed through or where rains or slides had exposed the portions that had been long buried, and in at least one place we passed the rusted out remains of a car. The books back at the old vault and the stories told by the elders said that they were a way for people to get around without walking or riding horses back in the Time Before the Vaults, but I don't know how much faith to put in that. The hulk was little more than a metal frame and a few shards of rusted steel that was little more than dust. The ground under the snow had been stained by the already dissolved metal of centuries past and part of the front end of the vehicle was buried, as if swallowed up by the ground itself or had grown there like some grotesque plant.

The day passed without event and we made camp in the shade of a cliff where a small stream flowed from a small spring in a jumble of rocks. A pool sat among the rocks that was mostly frozen over, but a tiny trickle flowed from it and the water was good enough. We picketed the horses on the grass and swept the snow away so that they could get at it, then pitched our tents in the lee of the bluff where we would be shielded from the wind and the worst of the cold. There was a ring of stones already in place and the black, desiccated remains of many other fires that had been made here. Like many other good camping places, this one had been used many times by many different people. Travelers, hunters, raiding parties, caravaneers, wanderers, all were men who knew of and remembered such places. Some left offerings to the gods or the spirits of travel or the trails for a prosperous journey, but I saw none here.

We had gathered Radbuff chips along the way and we built a small fire. Earlier in the day I had killed a Radbuff calf that we had found wandering the snowy plains alone and motherless, so we ate well. With men on guard to watch the horses and the goods, we all slept deeply and were in the saddle before daylight pierced the overcast sky. The trail wound its way over the barren plains and turned east. Eventually moving into the hills and tall pines once again. We saw no game or men, although we were on the southern borders of the territory of the Plainsmen bands. The air was fragrant with the scents of the pines, the cedars, and the oaks, refreshing after the long emptiness of the prairie, and the trail now became more asphalt than dirt and was more well kept. In places the pavement had been swept clean and in some it was even smoothed and unbroken. That night we camped in the ruins of an old hunting lodge, taking shelter in the abandoned buildings and picketing the horses on good grass. We ate more of the calf's meat and were in the saddle again at daybreak.

It was almost dusk of the third day when we came into a hidden valley much like our own, nestled in the foothills of a saw-toothed mountain range just on the fringe of what had for centuries been called the Badlands. Prehistoric beasts and ancient peoples had been found out in those arid wastes in bygone times, but now it was just another patch of land where few men dared to travel and from which few ever returned. A shallow river flowed out of the mountains down the narrow valley, which was maybe a mile wide and all of four six miles long, and everywhere there were the uncounted legions of the pines and the aspens. The old highway was obvious here and at the its terminus there was a small settlement surrounded by a square-shaped stockade made of sharpened pine logs. The stockade was fifteen feet high with battlements and a walkway along the top, towers and guardhouses at each of its four corners, and the gate was fortified with cavalry spikes and a blockhouse over the gate itself where men could fire down on attackers. Above the gate was a sign made from a huge old log that had been sawn in half and painted with the name "Hooverville".

Two sentries in the gatehouse called out a challenge, which we answered in both Res and English, and after a moment the massively built gates were swung open and we went inside. The gate was tall enough for a man and horse to easily come through and there were rifle slots in the logs, and when we passed through I could see a huge pine beam and large brackets where it could be slid into place to seal the gate off to intruders. All the men I could see were rough-looking characters. Most of the them were dressed in rough homespun trail clothes, a few of them wore the khaki uniforms of some southern military and were armed with Marksman Carbines, and there were even a few Tribal scouts in camp that I saw lounging near the sutler's store. There were a few Black Hands in town, trading, and as we approached the trading post I saw a group of Plainsmen just stepping out. We exchanged looks and they trotted their horses back towards the gate, happy to be away from us. Our tribes had been rivals for generations, but this was regarded as neutral ground where all could safely come and trade. All tribes were welcome as long as they came peacefully, be they Fire Hairs, Black Hands, Plainsmen, White Legs, or even the Eaters of Men.

The trading post itself was the central and largest building of the little town. It was two stories tall, the upper floor fortified and hardened against attacks. I could see crosscuts in the thick upper walls and the second color itself hung a good three feet farther out than the rest of the building, allowing shooters to fire down on attackers from cover, and the heavy door was made of thick pine beams that could stop almost any bullet. A hand-carved sign hung over the door with the name Happy Trails Caravan Company carved into it. A soldier at the door wore the same khaki uniform as the sentries, his Marksman Carbine slung low at his side, and as I walked past him I noticed the patch on his shoulder. It was some kind of insignia, a turquoise flag with a round silver chip embroidered with the number 38 and Nevada Federation around the rim.

It didn't take long for us to conclude our trading business. Deals like ours were common and the traders at the post were all too ready to do business. Hides and gems like ours were in high demand back where they came from, and weapons, tools, and supplies like theirs were treasures here in the north. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, as they say. We traded our goods for a few hundred pounds of flour, sugar, and salt, a thousand rounds of ammunition of assorted calibers, some axes and picks, and Hawk's-Eye did a side trade for a new rifle. His old Hunting Rifle was worn out and one of the caravaneers had a Trail Carbine that he didn't need anymore, so they did a trade for his old rifle and a good fighting knife or the carbine and a hundred rounds of .44 mag. I had some cap currency leftover from my last trip here, so I shopped around for myself.

The trading post was well stocked, sporting just about every amenity that a man could want in this frozen wasteland. Clothing, jeans, boots, harness and tack, weapons, tools, dried goods, supplies of every kind, and nearly every kind of weapon or ammunition short of a Fat Man or other explosive that money could buy. I bought a few boxes of .44s and .45-70s, some powder and lead and some other reloading supplies, and a few other little things that I needed. Once our trading was done and our gear was loaded onto the horses we started to head back out, but the day was waning and the cold was closing in too fast. To leave now would only mean a cold camp in the woods somewhere. There were several empty cabins and a stable in town that could use to bunk down, kept so for that very purpose, and after just a little discussion we decided to stay a while. Our horses needed the rest and we were all done in as well.

After the horses and gear had been stowed away in the town stable, one of the caravaneers led us to a cabin near the town square. In the northeast corner of town there were maybe half a dozen such cabins, each with rows of bunks along both walls that could sleep up to a dozen men. Each cabin had a stove, a large table and several chairs, racks for weapons and gear, and footlockers for storage of personal belongings at the foot of each bunk. Each cabin was strongly built and the stoves kept the place nice and warm once they were fired up. We all stowed our gear and got comfortable. Marcus took wood from the pile in the far corner and fired up the stove and when I laid out on my bunk I was almost instantly asleep.

When I awoke the room was bright and warm and I could hear the fire crackling in the stove. August and Marcus were sitting at the table playing cards with a caravaneer, some game that he called Caravan, and Hawk's-Eye and Dead Shot were asleep on their bunks. Colin was in the tiny kitchen area cutting something up for a meal. A glance at the dark window told me that it was nighttime. I rubbed my eyes and stepped from the bunk, threw my gunbelt around my hips and buckled it on, then instinctively took out my revolver and checked its loads. My rifle was on a rack above my bunk, my possibles bag hanging from one of the pegs. I was stiff and tired, despite the long nap, but I was also restless. I'd always hated being cooped up in a building or a lodge for too long. I hitched my holster into a better position, straightened the collar of my coat, and started for the door.

"I'm going out for a walk, boys. Don't wait up."

"Stay out of trouble."

"Come on, Marcus. You know me."

"That's what I'm saying."

I could hear them all laughing as I swung the door open and stepped out into the cold air. The cold was like an ice wall, the temperature easily down in the lower teens or the single digits, and there was a medium snow blowing on the wind. I stuck my hands in my pockets and started down the makeshift streets toward the town square.

The town of Hooverville was only a few years old. Originally it had been just a couple of buildings, the trading post, a barracks for the few caravaneers that lived there, and a storehouse for traded furs surrounded by a makeshift fence. As more trade came through and the caravans from the south became richer and more frequent the camp was built up into a small town and the fence was replaced by a strong palisade. It had been attacked four times and nearly destroyed twice, three of the attacks by the Black Hands and the other two by the Eaters who had come north in search of the plunder that the trading post would offer. It was after the last attack that the country the caravans came from, this Nevada Federation, had sent a small contingent of soldiers to defend the post and the trade routes from the south. There had been a few small skirmishes since then near and around the town between the soldiers and the Black Hands and Eaters. That was enough to deter any further attacks.

The town itself was laid out like an army camp. At the center of town was the square with the trading post, sutler's store, main caravan office, and the old barracks on the four corners of it, two large storehouses on the western side of the compound, the stable running along the north wall, and in the eastern half were the cabins that had been built for the permanent residents and for visiting trading parties. There were several outbuildings and storehouses, an armory, a wood shed, a blacksmith shop for repairing equipment and shoeing horses or pack Brahmin, and an office for the lieutenant in command of the twenty or so soldiers who had been stationed here. All told, Hooverville's permanent population was somewhere around a hundred people.

As I walked the streets and came closer to the town square, I could hear the sound of music and loud voices coming from the large building that was the old barracks. It was a long building, about a hundred feet long by thirty feet wide, and the dark logs and plank roof were weather-beaten and old. The windows were all alight and I could hear men singing and talking and shouting to one another, there was smoke coming from the chimney, and when a man came from the door a small cloud of cigarette smoke came with him and I caught the smell of cooking meat, whiskey and strong beer on the wind. My stomach growled under my thick coat and I realized that I hadn't eaten in several hours, and furthermore I had been craving a drink. We made a decent type of moonshine back home in the village, but I had always favored that fine whiskey that they brought up from the southern lands.

One step through the door and I knew I was among my kind of people. All the same hard-faced and rough looking men I'd seen earlier in the day were here. Caravaneers, Tribal scouts, the hostler from the stable, a few of the soldiers, they were all here drowning out the cold and the monotony of living in the frigid wilderness. I sat down at a table and a pretty waitress came to take my order. I ordered a tall beer and the best meal in the house and with a dainty little smile she promised it would be out in a flash and then disappeared into the crowd of rough men that were filling the place.

With quick, measuring glances, I took in the room and all the men that were in it. They were the type of men that had always come to places like this. Big, strong, muscular, rough in their speech and their ways, hardy men that had come to a hard land in search of a better life. The frozen north was no place for a weak man. Out here men died very easily and it took men with the bark on to make any kind of life in this land. All the soldiers had the look of fighting men. The older ones all seemed very seasoned and battle-hardened and I saw a deep scar on the face of one of them. They were warriors, just as I was, and when they looked at me we each recognized the other for what we were. Most of the others were working men, hunters, and caravaneers, but there was one man that stood out from the crowd. He stood at the far end of the bar and sipped his whiskey alone, a bottle on the bar beside him.

He was tall and muscular, the sleeves and front of his shirt bulging with muscle, and his hair and beard were neatly trimmed. He wore a red flannel shirt over thick jeans that were tucked into military boots, and there was a thick Radbuff coat hanging on the back of his chair. A scoped Hunting Rifle was leaning against the bar and I could see two 10mm Pistols hanging low and strapped down in military holsters on both thighs, and when he turned to look across the room I could see a Combat Knife on his web belt. Few men went that well armed without a good reason. His stance was pure military, his bearing spoke of an experienced fighter, and even from across the room I could see the way that he leaned against the bar with his hand hanging naturally at his side with his thumb hooked in his pocket, within inches of his gun, while he sipped his whiskey with his left hand. His eyes were hidden behind the large reflective sunglasses that he wore, but I needed no one to tell me that he was scanning the room just as I was and that his eyes missed nothing. This was a fighting man, and a dangerous one.

The waitress came back with my meal and my beer, and after a pretty little smile and a word about her looks she walked away and I dug right in. It was good food, wholesome food, the kind that men like me had always eaten. A thick Radbuff steak garnished with wild herbs and a hearty side of roasted potatoes and greens. I ate slowly, savoring every morsel, knowing that soon it would be back to camp fare and short rations until the spring came. The food was good and the beer was thick and strong. I finished the beer about halfway through the meal and was about to order another when the tall man with the sunglasses suddenly appeared at my table. His rifle was slung over his back, his coat was over one arm, and in each hand he held a mug of frothy beer.

"You look like a whiskey man to me, but I figured a beer would go better with that steak," he said as he put one of the mugs down on the table in front of me, "mind if I join you?"

"Not at all. Go ahead and have a seat."

He put his rifle and coat in one of the other chairs and sat down across from me. I didn't miss the fact that he pulled his chair far enough back to allow him to reach his guns if the need arose, or that he held his beer in his left hand while his right rested on his thigh. His voice was gravelly and deep and had that whiskey-cured drawl of a drinker. He scratched his beard and took a long drink, waiting for me to continue the conversation.

"You're one of those Fire Hairs that came into town, aren't ya?"

"Yes I am. We came to trade some hides for food and supplies."

"I've heard of you guys. You always bring in some good hides. I love those horses you ride. I'd love to have one of those for myself."

"Do you ride?"

"Didn't used to, but since I came up here I kinda got a taste for it. We don't have horses back home. Lots of old car hulks and plenty of scrap heap trucks and vertibirds, but nothing that you could ride. We walk everywhere we go."

"That must be fun. I couldn't imagine a world without them."

"After living up here for so long, neither can I."

"So where's home, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Nevada, down around New Vegas. I used to live in a town called Novac. They had a big dinosaur statue and a motel with a nice little restaurant. Not much of a place until after the war. I hear it's become a hopping place since then."

"Sounds like a nice little place. You sound like you've been around."

"I guess you could say that. New Vegas, New Reno, Utah, now here. I signed up with the Happy Trails company after the war and we've covered a lot of ground since then. We've got branches in California, New Canaan, Reno, Hopeville, a little town in Kansas called Pawnee, and now this one. I have to say, I like it up here. I've spent enough time in the desert. I figured I'd come north and cool off for a while."

"So why are you here? Right now, I mean. I don't know you."

"And I don't know you. Seen you around a couple times, but that's all. I figured since we were both by ourselves I may as well come over and introduce myself. Speaking of which, where the fuck are my manners?" He extended his hand in a gesture that I'd seen southerners use before that they called a handshake. "I'm Craig Boone. Pleased to meet ya."


	3. Chapter 3

We had meant to leave town the following day, but late in the night a deep snow came down and covered the trails in deep drifts, then the next day a heavy storm blew in that brought high winds and more driving snow. The trails were covered in drifts as deep as three or four feet, with the gullies and valleys being as deep as ten feet in some places. The walls of the town and the tightly packed buildings sheltered us from the worst of the wind and the cabins were well built and made warm by the good stoves that we had. There were two storehouses full of wood that had been cut in calmer weather, so we didn't want for fuel. Our horses were sheltered in the stable and our goods were safely stored, so in the warmth and safety of the cabins we waited out the storm.

I spent most of my time in the old barracks, now called the Brahmin Pen by the man who had turned it into the bar. The food was good and the bartender made the whiskey and beer himself. The stuff was good, although not quite as good as the Moonshine we made back home, and it went a long way toward holding off the cold outside. The thermometer outside the door was usually covered in snow and ice, but when I could see it the mercury was usually somewhere in the neighborhood of -12 degrees.

Boone was there most of the time and we often sat and talked over a beer or the strong drink that he seemed to prefer, something that he called coffee. I'd never had it before and at first I didn't like the strong, bitter taste, but it was warm and strong and it kept the cold out better than the whiskey and wouldn't get me drunk. Most of the other soldiers and workmen steered clear of us, knowing that I was a stranger and a Tribal and that Boone was an outsider who rarely came to town unless to trade or to take some caravan into the mountains or back down the trail toward the south. Through our conversations and the little talk that I could pick up around the settlement, I found out that he had been living up here for the better part of four years. Originally he had come as a caravaneer, like many of the men here had, and since then he had become a tracker, a guide, and a market hunter supplying meat and hides to the outpost. He'd fought the Plainsmen and the Eaters of Men and had lived with the Black Hands for two winters, built himself a little cabin high up in the mountains, and generally lived alone in his forests and hills. He'd been in town for a guiding job and a good romp in the bar when I'd met him and now he was snowed in by the same storm as us.

I'd heard about men like him for a while, so-called "mountain men" or "prospectors", but had never met one face-to-face. He was strong and solidly built, broad at the shoulder and in the arms but narrow at the waist and hips, he had the powerful legs of a walker and climber, and his face was covered in the thick beard that many men of the mountains wore. Shaving in the cold was always a chore and a thick beard kept a man warm in the snow or on a long ride. His hands were weathered and callused by hard work and his skin was like leather. He was a man of the wilderness through and through, and the more that I was around him the more I came to like him.

Like me, Boone had always been a loner. He didn't talk much about his past, nor did I ask, but from what he did say I gathered that he had left his home about six years past. Apparently there had been some great war in his homeland and he had left at the first opportunity. His company, the Happy Trails Caravan Company, had been opening new trails for trade and commerce and he had signed on as a caravaneer and guard. He'd been to Utah, guiding the caravans to the newly built New Canaan branch in Zion Valley, then to the New Reno branch in northern Nevada, and finally here to the far north while exploring new territories for the company and for his nation, this Nevada Federation that he said was made up of several tribes in his homeland of New Vegas. It was a good story and hearing it helped to pass the time, and he was a cheerful, talkative man that was only too happy to tell it.

The storm raged on for two days, the wind whistling and howling outside and constantly throwing snow against the buildings and the walls of the town, and when it finally did subside it only left the town isolated and completely cut off. The trails and valleys were choked with snow and ice and covered by a thick coat of white that was several feet deep, impassable to a man on a horse and certainly no weather for a horse laden with hundreds of pounds of gear and supplies. On the third day after the storm ended, Boone came by our cabin and asked if any of us wanted to join him for a hunt. The outpost was getting short on meat and he was ready to get out and do something after being cooped up for so long. I was going stir-crazy as well and was only too happy to accept the invitation. The others still didn't trust him and wanted to stay in town near the supplies, which we had been keeping a close eye on, and Marcus didn't like the idea of me going. That didn't stop me from getting my rifle down off the rack and pulling my coat tight around my shoulders as I stepped out into the cold.

A horse and rider had no chance in such deep snow, but Boone had already thought of that. When I came out of the cabin he handed me a pair of snowshoes that he'd made and I slung them over my shoulder until we were at the gate. We found a soldier there who lent us a sled that was normally used for hauling wood so that we could haul back any meat that we got. I tied on my snowshoes and tied the sled's lead rope around my waist, and then with my rifle in hand and Boone in the lead we started out across the frozen landscape.

Everywhere I looked, the land was a solid sheet of white. The trees, the hills, the grass, the frozen band of the river, all of it was coated in a thick layer of snow that shone with a blinding light in the midday sun. Our snowshoes crunched under our feet, the tightly woven rawhide sinking only an inch or two into the snow, and behind me the sled crunched and grated over the frozen ground. We followed the river for the first couple of miles before turning off onto a trail that Boone knew and followed it into the hills. The open prairie gave way to thick stands of aspens and then gradually they gave way to younger pines that had had supplanted the older trees. Aspens always grow after a burn and are one of the first trees to grow at this altitude, growing tall and thick to offer shade to the young pines that eventually grow taller and stronger than their protectors until they finally force out the older trees and leave only fallen, rotting logs to show that they had ever been.

We found little sign of game at first. Looking around as we walked, I saw nothing but the barren white snow for miles in every direction. We followed the trail, barely discernible under the snow apart from the strip of plain snow winding through the trees that marked the clear path below, into the higher hills and through a winding jumble of boulders that had fallen from the mountain above us in some bygone age. The name of the mountain in the Old World had long been forgotten and I knew of no name for it now. The trail followed the lay of the land, as most game trails tend to do, and as we approached the foothills we began to find signs of our prey.

The first sign were the fresh tracks of an elk that had followed the same trail we were following, then a fresh pile of scat that had been left by the same animal. Half a mile further we found where another elk had joined the first, and finally we came to more fresh tracks that had been made only a few minutes before. We followed them down into a little valley that was rimmed by tall cliffs, now with long ice falls that seemed to be frozen in time, and filled with snow-covered pines and cedars in their innumerable legions descending down the slopes of the mountains. Somewhere down in the valley I heard water running. The blue ribbon of a cool mountain stream wound its way through the valley floor and there, in a little glen a few young trees and some tall brown grass still grew, I could see two large brown forms pawing at the snow and drinking from the stream.

Boone led the way and we made our way down to a ridge that overlooked the glen, leaving the sled beside the trail so to as make as little noise as possible. The elk hadn't seen us yet, but the wind was in their favor and they were still a good three hundred yards away and downhill from us. The trees gave way to the open glen and to approach them was out of the question. They would see us and be gone before we even left the tree line. Looking down at the little valley and the long shot, we decided to chance it. We both took a rest, Boone over a fallen log and me in the crook of a forked tree. I eared back the hammer of my rifle, holding the trigger so it wouldn't click, took in a breath and let it out slowly, then squeezed the trigger.

Our rifles spoke at almost the same instant. I'd taken a sight on the cow by the stream and I saw her buckle, her head jerking to one side as my bullet took her in the neck, and as I levered a fresh round into the chamber I saw her fall. The bull let out a painful bellow, his leg folded under him, and then he slid down into the snow. We retrieved the sled and went down to the two fallen animals, finding them both stone dead. It took only minutes for us to get to work skinning and dressing out the kills. Both of us were skilled in this craft and both of us knew to waste nothing. We laid out the hides and put the meat in them for easy transport. We were almost finished and I was about to toss the last shoulder of the cow into the hide when I heard a sound from the trees, a sound that I'd heard before and had long since learned to fear. Boone heard it too and the both of us immediately froze in place. I looked over Boone's shoulder and that's when I saw them.

There were two of them, both big young males. I saw their white forms moving against the darkness of the trees, slipping from one to the other like ghostly specters. They had been hanging back, watching us butcher our kills, but now they were coming down the ridge and looking right at us. Snowhounds normally traveled in packs, sometimes as many as twenty or thirty to a bunch, but many times I'd seen young males like these driven out and forced to fend for themselves. I'd seen them do this before, listen for the sound of gunshots and then stalk a hunter for his kill. They were fierce hunters in their own right, with just one or two being able to take down prey as large as a Radbuff, but they had been known to steal meat from Yao Guai, Panthers, and even Deathclaws. No man wanted to face down a pack of the vicious predators, but even these two were more than most could handle.

Descended from the ancient wolves that had once hunted the northern lands, centuries of radiation and mutation had made a nearly perfect predator into an ultimate killing machine. These two were average sized, standing about four feet at the shoulder and weighing in and about three or four hundred pounds each, six feet long from nose to tail, and both with that solid white coat that gave them their name. Their large green eyes stared over the snow at us, peering into my very soul, as they came toward us on padded cat-like paws that made no sound and left almost no tracks. I could see their huge curved claws, yellowed from use and sharp as razors, and when they snarled I saw the huge canines and saw-like teeth.

Neither of us spoke. Boone stayed stock-still, shifting his knife to his left hand while his right reached down and gripped his pistol. The two hounds spread out now, circling to either side of us. My knife was still in my hand and I held the elk meat in the other, my revolver still lashed down in my holster and my rifle standing upright in the snow five feet away. It may as well have been in Wyoming. They were coming closer, ready to pounce, and I gave a nod to Boone. He nodded back, his every muscle poised like a crouching Panther, and then they came at us.

The larger of the two came at Boone and leaped for his back, but he rolled away at the last instant and drew his gun. He fired twice as the hound sailed over him, missing the first shot and hitting its paw with the second. The smaller, younger male came at me and I whirled around to face it, throwing the shoulder of meat right at it and hitting it in the face. It stumbled for a second, just long enough for me to sidestep and slash downward with my blade. If it had pounced on me it would have had me dead to rights, but this was a young hunter without experience hunting larger game. I felt the blade bite into flesh and felt warm blood spill over my hand as the hound let out a yelp of pain. He whirled around almost instantly, his jaws snapping for my arm. I jumped back just in time and the thing's teeth snapped shut within inches of my face. I slashed again and missed, stepping back as it came in for another try.

My foot caught on something and I fell backward into the snow. I felt the cold wetness fall over my collar and down my neck and smelled the fresh blood and meat and realized that I'd tripped over the carcass of the cow elk. The Snowhound came right in after me and pounced for me again, coming down at me before I could think. My hand shot up for its throat to push its teeth out of the way as its body came down on top of me. I felt something hit my hand an instant before the body hit me, heard a sound like a snapping carrot, then felt something warm spill over my arm and chest. The hound yelped and gurgled blood, its body jerked in my arms, then it went limp.

I could hear Boone cursing at the other hound and I struggled to push the dead beast off of me, finally shoving it off and rolling over to one knee. I looked up and saw Boone struggling with the Snowhound, its jaws locked around his rifle as he held it in front of him. He held it back for a moment and shoved the gun back, forcing it to go back a step, and suddenly I felt my gun buck in my hand and heard the report of the .44 magnum shell. The Snowhound's eye exploded in a shower of crimson and the thing fell dead at Boone's feet. I had no memory of drawing the gun or firing it, but there it was in my hand and there was the dead hound with the bullet through its eye. Boone looked over at me and at the gun in my hand, and for a brief moment I saw a smile creep across his face.

"You're pretty quick with that," he said.

"Some say so. I guess I never really noticed."

"Back home, they'd certainly take notice. Let's get this meat back to town. After all this excitement I feel like a nice juicy elk steak."

It took only a few hours to return to town. We went by a faster trail and found a game trail that cut through the foothills and came out less than a mile from the outpost. The sentries saw us coming and were only too happy to see our sled heaped high with meat and the hides and the antlers of the bull elk would fetch a good price back in their homeland. Marcus was at the Brahmin Pen when we came in and he was only too happy to buy us both a beer after the meat and hides had been put away. The bar was warm after the cold mountains and the beer and the food was good after the long walk. We told the story of our fight with the Snowhounds and raised our beers to each other's courage, in the tradition of my people, and for the first time in a long time I felt comfortable. I was warm, my belly was full, I was among friends. I was alive.

Five days after the storm hit the trails were clear enough for us to travel. We were eager to be going, having stayed far longer than we had originally planned, and as soon as the scouts came back with word that the snow was cleared enough for us to travel we were in the stable and loading up the horses. They were well rested and had been well fed, so they were fit and as ready to travel as we were. Buck had always been a trail horse and hated being cooped up. The stable was strange to him and I think it was the first time he had ever tasted oats. Hopefully his little vacation hadn't spoiled him to the southerner's ways and their comfy stables.

We led the horses to the gate and were met by Boone and Collins, the bartender at the Brahmin Pen, who gave us a bottle of hooch a pound of elk jerky for the road. We'd been in his bar for most of our stay and I'd come to like the big man with thinning blonde hair. Marcus and the others mounted up and started down the trail, but I hung back for a moment and said my goodbyes to Boone. He told us of some trails that would shorten our route and places to avoid after the snows, then after a few pleasantries he grasped my hand in his iron grip and said, "You're good people, Cain Lone-Elk. You ever need me for anything at all, you just come on down and I'll be ready to go. Happy trails, pard."

I stepped into the saddle and gave Buck a light kick to the ribs and within minutes I was caught up with the others. The snow was deep and I could hear ice crunching under the horses' hooves, but the clear weather of the past few days had allowed the sun to shine through and to melt away the worst of the snow covering the trails. Under every hill and in every nearby pass I could hear the sound of rushing water, the beds of the mountain streams flowing full with the runoff of this little melt. Come spring they would be running over their banks in raging torrents that would wash away everything before them. The debris of the winter, the deadfalls and the fallen branches and decomposing foliage that had accumulated under the snow, all of it would be washed away and the season of new growth could begin. Death would be replaced with new life, as it had always been and as it always should be.

We made better time than on the first trip, following Boone's directions and going by another route than what we had taken coming in. It was an old trick to never the same trail leaving as one did coming. An enemy could be laying in wait along that trail waiting for a man to come back along. We avoided the higher trails and canyons and passes that would be choked with deep snow. The drifts up there would be deep enough to swallow both man and horse if he wasn't careful. We made thirty miles the first day and Hawk's-Eye shot a young bull elk just before we made camp, so we ate well. Our camp was in a shaded glen that was hidden from view by thick stands of pine and had a gurgling stream beside it that gave cold, sweet water. I found myself missing the coffee from town as we sat around the fire, but the whiskey Collins gave us helped to stave off the cold and the elk meat smelled good over the burning pine logs.

The second day went by faster than the first. The trail we followed was one that was used by large game, elk, deer, Mole Rats, Snowhounds, and Panthers, and like all such trails it followed the lay of the land and went by the easiest route. The snow had mostly melted away from the trails and it ran in little rivulets that ran along the trail's course. The horses slipped in the mud from time to time and in some places we had to dismount and lead them along through the deeper snow that still stood in the shaded places where the sun never touched. We climbed steadily higher into the foothills as the day went on, pausing often to rest and to catch our breath. In this cold the worst thing that a man could do was sweat. Moisture on the skin could freeze into a thin film of ice under the clothes and would sap all the remaining heat from a body and bring on hypothermia in a matter of hours.

We camped along the bank of another stream and cooked more of the elk meat for our supper, finished off the last of the whiskey, and with August and Marcus on guard we bedded down and slept in relative safety from the cold and the wind. At dawn we were in the saddle and back on the trail. We had crested the ridge that we'd been following and so we made our way downhill and made better time.

All the while, something had been gnawing at me. All this time, we had not seen a single sign of another party of any human traffic at all. After such a storm and such a slight thaw, I would expect to see the tracks of hunting parties, scouts, scavengers, or of villages moving to a new camp or a spring encampment. It was just a couple months until the spring should be here, so the tribes would be out and about very soon. We had kept to the hidden ways, the devious routes that would keep us out of sight as much as possible, but in some places we had been forced to cross open areas and more traveled ways that would certainly have shown some indication of human traffic. I'd kept an eye out for horse tracks, moccasin prints, indentations of bare feet in the snow, anything that would signal that a man or rider had passed by. So far, nothing.

I had been riding with my rifle in the scabbard, but as we came closer to home I drew it and rode with it across my saddle. Maybe it was my warrior's sense, the gnawing feeling in my gut that something just wasn't right, or some deeper animal instinct warning me of some unseen danger, but for some reason I just felt wrong about this. There should have been someone out and around after the thaw, someone hunting or scouting or foraging, but the trails had been empty for at least the several days since the last snow. Someone, whether from our own tribe or some other between here and Hooverville, would have been out after the weather subsided. The only reason they wouldn't have been hunting or scouting was simple. Either they couldn't get out due to some unforeseen factor or they weren't around anymore to do any hunting.

We made our way along the trail and rounded the mountain that I had known since boyhood as a marker. We were almost home. We found the trail that led up and into the valley, climbed the slope just as the sun was starting to sink into the west, and when we were about to head down into the valley I smelled wood smoke. At first it was a comfort, a sign that all was well and that the evening fires were being lit for super, but as we came closer the smell got stronger and thicker. We rounded the bend of the trail and I found myself looking down into our valley at our village . . . . . and at the tall plumes of black smoke that rose from the ruins of several of the lodges.

Immediately we put heels to our mounts and we all but galloped down into the valley. Guards rose out of the brush and leveled rifles and bows at us as we approached, but we raised our weapons and shouted to them as we came in and they let us pass. We ran into the center of the village and were greeted by the sight of several bodies that had been laid out in two rows by the survivors, of which there were thankfully many. I counted twelve bodies in the two rows, all of them people that I had known. There several men, four women, and at the end of the top row I saw two children. One of them was a girl of about six years whom I didn't know and the other was a little boy. I felt my heart sink when I looked at the boy's bloody head and the way that his face had been smashed in by a club or a rifle butt.

Marcus was off his horse as soon as he saw the dead boy and I was on my feet a second afterward. He rushed to the side of the tiny body and looked him over, frantically searching for some sign that this was not his son. I heard him crying, begging the spirits and the southerners' God that this not be Adrian, and while he searched the boy's corpse I knelt down beside another of the dead. Finally I heard his exclamation of relief. Adrian had a bone amulet that always wore, an amulet that I had made for his last birthday, and this boy wasn't wearing such an amulet. Marcus looked over to tell me that it wasn't his son, but I didn't see his faint smile through my own tears. He followed my gaze down to the dead woman at my feet and immediately lost his brief composure. He dropped his rifle and fell to his knees, took the body in his arms, and for a few minutes I just sat back and let his tears fall on his wife's face.

From what I could tell, her passing had been mercifully quick. I could see a bullet wound in her chest and the dark stain of blood that covered her dress. The wound was over the heart and would have caused almost instant death. There was a stab wound in her side and there were defensive wounds on her hands and arms and I could see flesh and dried blood under her nails. She had fought them, then, and whoever had fought with her would know that he had been in a fight and would be marked by the experience. Her body was in rigor so she had been dead for at least a day or two.

"What happened?", I asked to no one in particular. I wanted to know what had happened, how this could happen in our sheltered valley, how they could get away with such an attack and get away clean as they must have done. Someone had come here to attack us and had killed our people, burned our village, and then gotten away. How could this have happened?! Who could have done this?! Who would have dared to come into our winter stronghold and do something like this?!

"Who did this?! Who did this to us?! Someone answer me!"

"We don't know," a frail voice said from the gathered crowd, "we didn't recognize them. I saw the White Legs with them, but there were others. They were dressed in red."

Red? No tribe in our region wore red or had it in their colors. A new tribe? Some new force that had migrated to the north from some other region? No, not this late in the winter and in the midst of a storm. The White Legs had been with them, so they must be some allies of theirs. But who would be allies of the White Legs? They were universally hated in the north and were the enemies of every tribe of both the mountains and the plains. Their only allies would have been in the south in their homeland around the Great Salt Lake, and most of them had supposed to have been wiped out when they were driven from the south and into the northern lands.

I wasted no more time with inquiries. Already my mind was on the trail and after the offenders. I looked at the bodies laid out in their macabre rows and felt no sadness, no shame, only anger. None of these people were my family, but all of them had been my kin. An attack on one of us was an attack on all of us. Whoever had done this had to pay. They had invaded our stronghold, killed our people, and burned our homes. This was no raid for horses or coups or loot. This was a murder raid, probably a revenge killing for the men they had lost when they attacked our hunting party. The hunting party . . . .

"What happened to the hunting party?", I suddenly asked, "What happened to the men who went out hunting just before we left for the outpost? Were they here?"

"No," the same old man told me, "we haven't seen or heard from them. They left the same morning as you did. They may have been caught in the storm or they might have been attacked before they hit us. I don't know."

"How many warriors do we have in camp?"

"Not many," a new voice said from the crowd. I looked over and saw the muscular, aged form of George Standing Bear come out of the crowd and come toward me, rifle in hand and with his pistol and knife on his hips. He wore his traveling clothes and his rifle had been cleaned. He wasn't an old man anymore, not now. At this moment he was a warrior out for revenge, a Yao Guai ready for the hunt. "With the five of you, we have just over two dozen in the village. We'll need to leave some behind to guard the people when we go."

"George . . ."

"You're not talking me out of this, Cain, so don't even try."

"We'll need supplies."

"We'll take what we need from what you and the others brought. Pack for a week's ride."

"How many horses did they take? We may need extra mounts."

"They didn't take any horses. They were all on foot. We didn't even seen them coming. They were in the village before anyone knew it, creeping in close with Snowhound skins for camouflage. I didn't even know they were attacking until I heard the shooting. I killed two of White Legs before they got away. They took some supplies, a few weapons, and ten of our people. Cain, they took the children."

"Adrian?"

"And six others, plus three young girls."

I looked over at Marcus, who was still holding Shana's body, and I knew that he had heard every word. He didn't have to speak. I could see the fire in his eyes, the same fire that was coldly burning in my own chest. Whoever these men were that had done this thing, they had crossed the line when they attacked our camp. Killing our people and burning our lodges was just average warfare for us, a fact of life that we had sadly learned to live with, but taking our children had gone too far. We would hunt them down and kill them all if we could, I would hunt them down to avenge my friend and his family, but most of all I knew that Marcus would not rest until he saw each and every one of those men dead. He would hunt them all to the edge of the earth, every man jack of them, and I cringed to think of what fate awaited them at his hands when he found them.

We wasted no more time. None of us were tired from the ride, but we needed fresh horses. We went to the horse herd and switched out our mounts. I threw my saddle over the back of my big black and fed him a bait of oats that I'd brought just for him. He was well rested and ready for travel, almost as if he sensed the urgency in my voice when I told him that we were in for a long ridge. Hawk's-Eye divvied up the supplies from our haul to the men that were in the party gathering around Standing Bear's lodge. The five of us were all ready to go, plus six of the young men in the village who were hungry for revenge. Half of them were barely fighting age, just a few weeks out of their initiations, but they were all we had and I could see the same fire in their eyes that was in the eyes of Marcus, Standing Bear, and my own. No one was going to hold them back from this. Some of them had lost family or kin in this attack and in that fire there was a thirst for blood.

Within an hour of our arrival we were back in the saddle and headed down the trail to the south, a dozen men armed to the teeth and mounted on good mountain horses. The snow had wiped out all trace of our enemies' passing, but we needed no tracks to know where they were going. There was only one trail that led toward the south out of our valley and once in the hills it led down into one of the old highways that had once been the lifeblood of the Old World. All accounts suggested that our foes were on foot, which gave us a distinct advantage. In thicker snow a man on snowshoes can outpace a horse and rider that has to break through the snow and ice, but now the snow was thinner and the trails were mostly clear. The ground was damp from the snow water, but our horses were born and bred to such things and no we could cover much more ground than they could.

Standing Bear told us that several days had passed since the attack and that the people had fled into the forest until the attackers were gone, so they had a large start on us. We pushed our horses hard and kept up a brisk pace, going at a canter whenever we could and stopping only occasionally to walk or rest them. We rode until the sun sank out of the sky and we were forced to make camp. Marcus wanted to push on through the night and we had to restrain him from riding on without us, finally convincing him that to do so would only be to get himself lost and maybe kill his horse from exhaustion. All our mounts were done in and needed the rest. There was a hint of snow in the air and we all knew that there was weather moving in again. The previous storm had been bad enough, but now it seemed than an even worse front might be moving in on us. The snow had covered the party's trail and nearly wiped out all trace of their passing, which they had more than likely counted on, and if another such storm came in now they we would most likely lose them altogether.

We made a dry camp and slept in shifts so as to keep a good guard on the horses. There were far more dangers in these lands than the men that we pursued. We were nearing the edge of our hunting grounds and were dangerously close to those of the Black Hands and would soon be approaching the lands that were claimed by the tribes of Eaters. There were always the natural dangers as well.

Dawn's first light found us already in the saddle and back on the trail. Within two hours we found the campsite, nestled in a dip of the land near a hot spring. The fires had been large, all three of them, much larger than any Tribal would build. We found pieces of strange food mixed with the bones of local animals, and in a trash heap on the edge of camp one of men found a glass bottle that looked like those used by the southerners. The snow had obscured most of the sign, but a good tracker could still make out a few things. I could see that the war party, if such it was, had joined a larger party and made this camp no less than two days ago. There were at least thirty in the new party, most of them men with the smaller tracks of children and women mixed in among them. In one place I saw a track that had been sheltered under a tree. It was strange, not like anything that I had seen before.

The track was wide, flat, and there were what looked like studs in the track where the sole of the foot stepped down. There were other tracks that were normal tracks of moccasins and snowshoes, but these were by far the most common. It looked like some kind of studded sandal or moccasin of some kind. Who would wear such a thing? No tribe I knew of wore sandals like that. Some of the tribes of the eastern mountains wore boots like the southerners and I'd seen some warriors of the Eaters of Men wearing leather sandals that tied around their legs, but I had never seen anything like these.

Gradually the forests gave way to the plains and we left behind the mountains and the hills for the flatlands. We followed the trail of our prey along the banks of the Henry's Fork into Idaho and followed them farther and farther south. Finally we came to a range of foothills where the land was more broken. The snow was all but gone now and the trail was more defined in places, but the more I looked to the westward the more I began to be concerned. Thunderheads were gathering over the high mountains and there was an increasing chill on the wind. Another heavy snow now could ruin the chase and possibly let our foes get away, not to mention that we would be caught out in the flats with few supplies and in hostile territory.

We rode the day through and we began to see fresher tracks that had been made since the thaw. There were more men in the group now, my best guess being about thirty, and they were leading what looked like about fifteen to twenty captives. The way they were walking made it seem as though they were all tied together and being led along. We made camp in the lee of a low cliff where the rock would serve as a reflector for the heat and to mask our fire. We were close to our prey now and we were taking no chances on them spotting us. Again Marcus was ready to ride on and find them in the night, but we talked him down again and after some argument he rolled into his bedroll. I took the first watch and went with my rifle and out ready. They were out there somewhere, probably within a few miles of our current position, and they had to know that they were being followed. We had pushed our horses hard and they needed a rest, as we did, but our hard travel had paid off. We covered ground much faster than those men on foot. Tomorrow we would find them and we would get our people back.

Again dawn found us in the saddle and on the trail. We followed the trail deeper into the hills and soon it left the river and wound into more broken ground. The bluffs rose higher and steeper and the land was increasingly rugged. We began to see more pines and aspens and there was a preponderance of cedars along the ridgelines. We all rode with our rifles out and ready now and I rode easy in the saddle. The black was tired and I noticed a slight hitch in his step, but he was still eager to run and ready to go at any moment. I was in the lead of our little column and I could tell that the trail was getting fresher, some the tracks less than a few hours old and with skids in the mud, but the more we rode the more uneasy I became.

The first thing that made me nervous came at about midday. The trail had been going steadily south and southeast and I was aware that we had crossed out of Montana and into the Old World state of Wyoming, but just after midday the trail turned suddenly east. It was an abrupt change and there seemed to be no reason for it, no natural obstacle or discernible trail which they would be following, no obvious place of shelter they would be seeking, nothing that would make it appear that there was a reason for their change of course. Up until now, these men had shown discipline and skill in covering their trail and had been moving at a far greater speed than other groups I'd seen traveling on foot. Looking at the few clear prints that I could see in the soft earth, I could see that there several places where feet had slipped and stumbled from fatigue. The prisoners had to be getting tired by now. They had been pushed hard on little sleep and probably less food and water. Whoever these men were, they were good and they knew their craft. These weren't the kind of men to abruptly change direction without a definite reason.

We had been riding along the edge of the foothills of a tall mountain range whose name I didn't know, but now the trail veered into the hills and followed the course of a dry creek. There was a small valley, maybe a mile wide and at least five miles long, that spread out on either side of the dry creek bed and was mostly deforested thanks to the high floods that came through during the spring thaws. I could see the marks on the trees and rocks where high water had flowed during past floods and I had no doubt that when the higher snows melted in the spring that this valley would be running with at least ten or twelve feet of cool, clear water. A wall of tall pines rose on either side of us and in places I could see great spurs of bare rock jutting out of the hillsides and giant boulders that had tumbled down from the mountain tops in some bygone age, and in the distance a high ridge rose up at the head of the valley. The ridge was covered with more pines, a few aspen, and I could see the white trunks of sycamores mixed in with them.

I began to see what looked like little side trails branching off from the main group. At first I thought they were just places where a man or prisoner had stepped away from the group to perform their necessaries or just from normal straying, but then I started noticing more and more of them and decided to follow one. I left the front of the column and told the others to go on ahead, walking Blackie just a few steps off the main trail before seeing that the tracks and signs of tracks weren't just veering off and rejoining the main group. They were leaving the sandy creek bed and angling off toward the tree lines on either side of the valley. I sat my horse with my rifle across my saddle bows and looked at the dark wall of the trees, then at the tall ridge up ahead of us. Why would anyone just walk away from the main . . . . . oh, shit!

"Get back!", I shouted at the others, now a good thirty yards away, "Get back! It's an AMBUSH!"

The last word was lost in a thundering volley of gunfire from the ridge ahead of us. I saw the three men in the head of the column fall from their saddles and saw Marcus and August's horses go down. I saw muzzle flashes from the rocks and trees along the ridgeline and recognized the sound of the shots as coming from Cowboy Repeaters. Immediately I put my heels into Blackie's sides and he broke into a dead run for the front of our now disorganized cavalcade. The others had spread out in a staggered line and were firing into the ridge while Hawk's-Eye rode in and scooped up August just a second before I caught Marcus' arm and swung him into the saddle behind me.

We all knew that we were dead to rights as long as we were out here. We were completely exposed on the sandy bed and the nearest cover was a hundred yards away on either side. The gunfire was constant now and we fired over our shoulders as we made for the mouth of the valley and the open prairie beyond. Bullets whistled and popped all around me and I felt one of them whip through my hair within inches of my face. Marcus clung to me with one arm around my waist, the other holding his rifle, while I spurred Blackie on a full gallop. I heard a sharp cry and looked over just in time to see another man fall. We were nearly five hundred yards from the ridge now, almost at the edge of their range. If we could just make the mouth of the valley we would be clear. If we could just . . .

Another volley of shots rang out and in the corner of my eye I saw the flashes of rifles in the trees, on my left this time! I felt Blackie's body tense beneath me and saw his head jerk downward. Instantly I kicked free of the stirrups leaped from the saddle, landing on my shoulders in the soft earth, rolling to the side and onto one knee just barely in time to avoid being crushed by his body as it tumbled head over heels. Marcus hit the group in a heap and I heard him cry out in pain, but I couldn't look back at him. More shots and muzzle flashes were coming from the trees and I could see forms moving between the pines. I saw what looked like a White Leg moving from one trunk to another and fired, throwing my rifle to my shoulder and firing on pure instinct. The round went wild and I saw bark fly from the tree.

I worked the lever and fired two more shots at likely places of cover, moving as I shot. Marcus was down and in pain and I had to get to him, help him up, get him and rest of us out of here. We had to get out of here! I turned and ran for the others, thumbing shells into my gun as I went, and that's when I saw the others. More men were down, both dead and wounded, and there were four horses laying dead in lines on both sides of our cavalcade. Guns were roaring from both sides of the valley and when I glanced at the ridgeline I could see a line of figures coming down the slope, all dressed in red and in a nearly perfect skirmish line, firing as they came down toward us.

Fire was coming from all sides now, bullets were cutting the air, and all sound was lost in the din of the guns and the screams of wounded and dying men and horses. Marcus was laying behind Blackie's carcass, his rifle resting over my dead mount's neck as he fired into the trees, and I dove down beside him and followed suit. Bullets peppered my once proud animal's corpse, the dead flesh and stiff wood and leather of the saddle stopping them cold. The men on the north side of our tiny perimeter were likewise huddling behind their fallen mounts. I could see that to run now would be pointless. We would be cut down one by one if we tried to run for it. We would never make it to the flats, and if we did we would be caught on open ground. We had only one chance now, we had to fight.

"Kill the horses!"

"What was that, Cain?!"

"Kill the fucking horses! Line 'em up and kill them for barricades!"

"Are you insane?! How will we get out?!"

"We'll never get out if we don't fight now! Just fucking do it!"

A horse whinnied and fell, then another a second afterwards. A third jerked and screamed in pain, a bullet through its rear shoulder. They were already targeting the horses, and now our only chance was to at least let their deaths mean something. Horses were sacred to us, the symbol of our tribe as one of the first to re-tame them after the vaults were opened, and to ask one of our men to kill his own mount was as close to a sacrilege as we knew. Even to kill an animal who was suffering was considered an irreverent act, but we had no choice. All of us who were behind cover laid down suppressing fire on the trees and the line of red-clad figures advancing down the valley while the rest led our remaining horses into a line of defense, a solid square around our tiny perimeter, and after a few swift slashes we had a wall of dead fortifications. We stripped the saddles and laid them across the gaps between the bodies, put our wounded in the center of the square, and then they came at us.

Shrill war cries came from the trees and I looked over the saddle at the trees, seeing a dozen or so White Legs coming out of the tree line with weapons up and charging right at us. I thumbed the last shell into my rifle and threw it to my shoulder, the barrel resting over the saddle, and fired into a warrior coming out from behind a thick pine. His chest blossomed red and he dropped in his tracks, so I worked the lever and shifted to a larger man lifting a Cowboy Repeater to his shoulder. I took a quick sight on his head and squeezed the trigger, then saw the massive slug rip away half his head before his body fell to the ground. I levered another shell in and shot point-blank into a third man's chest just as he was raising his tomahawk. They were on us then and another warrior came at me with his tomahawk swinging down on my head and blocked the blow with my rifle.

They came out of both sides of the valley, charging our little fort and peppering us with suppressive fire while the others stormed us. They came over our little battlement and it was hand-to-hand for the next few seconds. Men came over the dead horses and I saw knives and hatchets come out, as well as the cracks of pistol shots being fired at point-blank range. The man came at me with his tomahawk and I caught the shaft just below the blade on the receiver of my rifle, immediately twisted the gun to the side and wrenched the weapon from his hand. His other hand comes up and I see a large fighting knife clenched in his fist. I twist to the side just in time to avoid catching the blade in my gut, the bring my gun up and jam the heavy barrel into his chin. The gun jars in my hand and I hear the stifled choking scream, then swing the stock up and in a vicious blow that cracks his skull and knocks him to the ground.

Marcus shouts to my left and I see a White Leg on top of him, fighting for his pistol and twisting his injured leg beneath him. I drop my rifle and draw my knife, grab the White Leg's hair and pull him off of Marcus as I plunge the blade into his back up to the hilt. A war cry comes from behind me and I duck to the ground just in time to avoid a flying tomahawk that lodges itself into the now dead man falling over Marcus with my knife still in his back. My hand flashes and I feel the buck of my .44 in my palm and the White Leg's chest jumps with the impact of two bullets that sounded almost as one shot. A man comes over the front of the battlement and grabs my shirt, raising some kind of long blade for a killing blow. His grip is like iron and I swing my revolver hard for his knee. The stock strikes with a sound like an axe cutting wood and his leg buckles, his blade swinging wild within an inch of my face, but his grip is still strong. I hit him again, then again, and finally his grip fails and I spin around to face him.

He's not like any man I've ever seen before. His skin is dark, tanned by a sun hotter than any we in the north would ever know, and his face is covered by a black bandana and goggles under some kind of old helmet. His thick red tunic is covered by chest armor and shoulder pads, his wiry, muscular frame is smaller and shorter than mine, and on his feet he wears tall sandals that wrap around his leg from the ankle to the knee. A sheath for his machete hangs on his belt, as well as a holstered .357 Magnum Revolver with a row of shell loops behind it. He was barrel-chested and his long sleeves bulge with thick arms, but otherwise he is a smallish man. He was shorter than my six feet by a good five inches, his hair was almost jet black, he had some strange symbol on the breastplate of his armor. It was a rearing bull, painted in yellow over the red of his armor and tunic.

He recovers from the pain of his leg quickly and takes a swing with his machete. My arm comes up and I block his swing, bringing up my gun for a shot at his chest. He leans in and butts me in the head, his helmet hitting me so hard that I see stars, and as I go back a step my gun falls from my stunned hand. Immediately he moves in on me with his blade held low and coming in for a thrust. On pure reflex I threw a stiff jab that takes him in the jaw, stopping him cold and giving me the second I need to recover my faculties. He comes back at me within an instant, swinging his blade in a backhanded slash for my face, but I step back just in time and grab for the tomahawk in my belt as he comes in. Another jab hits him in the jaw, then another, and as he goes backward I come in with a swing of my own and feel the blade of my tomahawk hit him hard on the helmet and glance off. I dodge another cut that leaves a red line on my arm and swing for his neck, which he dodges as well.

The battle rages all around us, the bark of the guns, the screams of charging and dying warriors, and the rising wind howling in my ears, but for the moment we are focused only on each other. He is by far one of the most skilled warriors I've ever fought. His moves are catlike, graceful, deliberate. His blade moved like an extension of his arm, darting in and out of action and slashing at me with unbelievable speed. He was smaller than me, but much faster and striking like a Cazador with lightning speed and then retreating back into a solid defense. His blade is longer than mine, giving him the advantage of reach as well as speed.

We circle each other warily, each looking for a weakness in the other's defense, and then from the ridgeline to the east there came a sound like thunder. No, not thunder . . . . a horn. I'd heard only one other horn in my life, used by a tribe far to the west called the Bighorns who used them to signal each other. The horn blew long and loud, the echo sounding off of the mountains and hills around us and drowning out even the sounds of battle. My enemy takes advantage of my momentary distraction and steps in for a swipe at my neck. I feel the tip of the keen blade cut a neat little line along the line of my chin as I step back. This time, though, he steps on a patch of wet mud and he slips for a moment. My tomahawk comes up and I swing down as hard as I can, lodging the blade in the shoulder of his armor and raising a scream of pain from my foe. He reels back and grabs for the shaft of the weapon, but it's too late. I step in and take his sword arm in my hands, twist the machete from his grip, and with a battle cry of my own I bury the blade deep in his neck. His scream is stifled by blood flowing from his wound, and after a moment he falls to his knees before falling on his face in the damp soil.

Immediately I look for my weapons, finding them a few feet away beside the dead White Legs and the carcass of my faithful old horse. I scoop them up and holster my pistol, sheath my knife, and begin thumbing cartridges into my Medicine Stick. My tomahawk is still buried in my machete-wielding foe's shoulder, so I don't take the time to retrieve it yet. I rush to the battlement and search frantically for an enemy at which to shoot. There are none. The bodies of the dead are strewn across the valley on three sides of our little redoubt, the scars of the battle are visible in the trees and churned earth, and I see the bodies of more men inside the ring of horse carcasses that was our defensive wall, but the rest are nowhere in sight.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over. The echoes of the horn and the gunshots died away, fading into the vastness of the mountains and the forests, and then all was quiet and still. There's a kind of silence that can only be appreciated immediately after battle. The roar of the guns and the sounds of the wounded and dying assault the ears and the senses, and then suddenly the din is gone and one is left with only a deafening, ear-splitting silence that seems almost as terrifying as the battle itself. The mountains and trees sat before me now, silent and stoic as they had ever been, and in the distance I could see the snow-capped top of a high peak that seemed to be almost mocking us with its serenity.

Looking around, I took in the grim scene. I counted thirteen dead enemies in or around our defensive wall, most of them White Legs. Two of them are the strange men in red, one of them the man I had killed and the other sprawled over a dead buckskin mare on the east side of our defenses. We had made them pay for this attack, but the cost was not all on their side. Of the eleven that were in our original party, only four were left now. Three of the younger men had been killed in the first volley, a couple more during the chase, and the rest had been killed during the attack. The square of our little wall, which measured all of thirty feet across, was filled with the bodies of both friend and foe. Several of the younger warriors who'd come with us, some of them barely out of their teens, would never be going home. August, whom I had known since childhood, was sprawled over his dead mare with a bullet through his head. Hawk's-Eye, whose name came from his famed accuracy with a long rifle, lay in the churned earth of the center of the square where the wounded had been taken. His arm was in a makeshift sling and I could see where the top of his sleeve was cut by a large blade and stained with blood.

Of the four of us that remained, only myself and Dead Shot were unharmed. Hawk's-Eye had taken a machete slash to the arm, probably from the same man I had killed, and his arm would be useless until it could heal properly. Marcus' leg was wrenched terribly by the fall he'd taken from my tumbling horse, and when I looked more closely at I could see that it was indeed broken. I set the bone and tied splints made from the broken stocks of two of the White Legs' rifles, then sat him against the cold bodies of the horses to rest. A few shots came from the hills to keep our heads down and we fired back occasionally, but after two hours we neither saw nor heard any other sign of our enemies. They were gone, and now we had an even greater threat to deal with. In the distance the sky was growing ever darker, the air was getting colder, and after an hour or so I began to see tiny white flakes floating on the wind. A storm was coming, we were out in the open, and now we had no horses.


End file.
